the top 2 inches - how to stay ahead

Services

  • We only ever use real examples of investments, launches, acquisitions, prices and even cock-ups on occasion by firms actually trying stuff in your market to illustrate trends and strategies. Essential thinking time nudged or provoked by real moves every week.

  • A bespoke market valuation of your firm, a tailor-made map of your competitive position and closest competitors, and call us any time for points of clarification or support. This includes the weekly intel service and is a virtual non-exec support suite.

Decision support…

I just love it when from the same data 2 or 3 people take radically different directions based on it. It’s that entrepreneur definition (and it applies to intrapreneurs too):

‘people with an unreasonable conviction of the improbable’.

See the investment committee Youtube on the Insights tab for a good example.

So do you still need the data? Sure, and it’s got to be sound.

But it’s about supporting decisions. That’s what we do.

It’s not just projects, valuations, budgets, or 5 year plans. It’s knowing what you’re taking on, not reinventing the wheel, standing on those giants’ shoulders, and yes, sometimes, just being plain cussed. It really helps to know that to 3 decimal places over decades

- and we can do that.

Our experience comes from decades of line director graft. Building teams from a few dozen to over 1k staff brings lessons and scars.

Then there’s being reversed into M&A and due diligence work, first as principals building a market leader for a blue chip, then for PE teams, and also for founder led tech start-ups. We can do the mba thing if need be, but it’s not our focus - we find it’s easier to teach stats to doers.

So what? Well an empathy for founders, SMEs, and showing busy entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs how to navigate the corporate fiance world has stuck with us, and latterly as non-executive directors we aim to provide that still-small-voice behind the wrangling and headaches of day-to-day pressures.

We always take a factual, market-based, external perspective - we inform from real examples we’ve either run or seen at close quarters in the market.

Sure, we do some research publishing and due diligence reporting too. We’ve been to EU Competition Commission wrangles and Cabinet Office level dispute resolution - but that’s not the point. We take hard econometrics and apply it to your sector, plans and dreams. We cover M&A too ofcourse, but we are not commission hounds and always the soul of discretion and confidentiality.

If you want to be the best informed in the market, what it values, how it’s moving and where - grab a coffee and a chat. If you want to see how that translates into tactical and operational moves for you and yours - we can help - and quantify it too

- decision support is our mission.

Tell us what you need

From £13 a week, you can be better informed than the bankers, the VCs, the accountants, and the big PLCs. We track every corporate finance and market development issue for firms in the health & safety, HR, employment law, and certification compliance markets in the UK and have done for decades. (The ‘GRC’ suppliers market.)

A favourite of founders, owner-managers, and line directors, we provide the still, small, voice of calm, reason, and factual accuracy, essential to facing the challenges ahead.

From M&A to operational benchmarking, we provide accurate, independent and reliable insights - we can’t take away the 3am sweats, but we can help you put some real context and numbers around them. Drop us a line for a confidential free chat - you’ve got nothing to lose (not even sleep).