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sustainableaustraliafund.com.au
The Sustainable Australia Fund (SAF) is Australia’s leading provider of finance for businesses to upgrade their buildings to achieve savings through energy efficiencies, as well as addressing climate change. This entirely new form of finance, known as Environmental Upgrade Finance, was created by the SAF’s earlier incarnation, the Sustainable Melbourne Fund (SMF).
The SMF had been seeking to expand its footprint, but it needed a clear set of forecasts (especially cashflows from buildings financed) to prepare the groundwork for further wholesale funding.
SMF engaged Wiseworth to build a financial model to forecast profit and loss, balance and cashflow, with full sensitivity analysis and scenarios management.
The results allowed for vastly improved budgeting and capital-planning, a successful capital raising and ultimately a successful national expansion.
Scott Bocskay, CEO:
“As the CEO of the Sustainable Melbourne Fund, I needed a detailed financial model that could help us forecast the financial outcomes of the Fund's new and consequently, complex business model. I wanted to use it to help set the Fund's strategy, for business planning, for testing different sensitivities and scenarios and for setting an annual budget within the context of a longer term strategic outlook of performance for the Board of Trustees. Our business structure is fairly complex, involving different types of loans and investments with sophisticated financial structure, combined with service provision and a somewhat awkward governance structure.
Mark was engaged to build the financial model for us on a tight deadline. Mark was quick to understand our business structure and its underlying cash-flows with thorough questioning. He rapidly built an auto-balancing financial model with clear inputs, linked profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow (all presented for ten years forecast on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis). It also contained a powerful sensitivity functionality with many configurable scenarios, built-in error checks plus an attractive Executive Summary page which made presentations and reporting to the Board of Trustees easy. The result was a powerful, accurate, flexible, transparent and presentable financial model that has been extremely valuable for our forecasting, business planning and for discussions with board members. The biggest benefit has been that the model is used upon an annual basis to review the strategic outlook of the business of the Fund and reduce management time in preparing and reviewing both annual budgeting cycles and long term planning. Such a tool has enhanced management’s ability to provide transparent and forward looking statements to investors within the Fund.
Mark is clearly a talented financial modeller whose background in banking and finance provides a clear advantage. The model used Excel in a way I have not seen before, yet it's easy to use and clear. Mark was highly consultative, friendly and approachable. During the build phase, he was constantly checking-in with us to ensure the model would meet our needs. He also came up with useful new ideas and explained how the model was being built as he went, which was valuable in my subsequent use of the model.
Mark's greatest strengths are his sound commercial level of understanding which enables him to grasp complex frameworks and incorporate that efficiently into a functional and easy to use tool using his strong modelling skills, his commitment to delivery of timely outcomes and frankly, persistence and commitment to problem solving. I would not hesitate to recommend Mark's financial models." -
Cashrewards is an cashback website that allows customers to receive cash rewards for shopping at retail stores around Australia.
The company had limited forecasting and business planning capacity, with no means to test different business scenarios.
Wiseworth built a scenario modelling tool that enabled Cashrewards to test the effect of changing different business drivers, including potential go-to-market initiatives.
The results allowed the business to adjust its advertising spend and target its marketing more effectively.
Zelma van Woerkom, CFO:
“Our commercial finance team was in its infancy, with no structured processes or reports available for scenario analysis.
Mark’s easy-to-use and dynamic tool determined the impact to the base case of different scenarios on different elements of our driver tree.
He hit the ground running, learning the commercials of the business with our team, while simultaneously building out the prototype, instilling confidence early on.
Mark remains a trusted business partner.”
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The Gartner Group is a global technology research and consulting firm with a strong presence in Europe.
Gartner had a large sales force but it was inhibited by a manual sales forecasting system that took a fortnight to consolidate up to region and country level.
The company engaged us to design, build and deploy an Excel-based global sales forecasting system.
The result radically improved the accuracy, detail, speed and frequency of its European sales forecasting processes, allowing upper management to make better-informed business decisions. The system was so successful it was rolled-out globally.
Alister Christopher, VP Group Sales, Europe:
“This letter is intended to act as an open reference for Mark Jeanes, who has been under contract with Gartner Group at different times over the last 2 years.
Mark undertook a project to help GartnerGroup Europe define and then implement a business forecasting model, with the objective of providing us with a consistent and accurate view of our potential sales and revenue over our fiscal year. This module was to be implemented using Microsoft Excel/Visual Basic for Applications.
In order for the project to be a success, he had to rapidly gain a detailed knowledge of our business model, and how to best report this in a meaningful manner.
It became apparent very quickly that he not only had a very good understanding of Excel/VBA, but, far more importantly to us, he had great ability to understand and interpret business requirements in such as way as to question them in the first instance, and then design the system to meet, and often exceed, our expectations.
Apart from the above, Mark proved to be a very reliable, trustworthy and competent colleague. Quite simply someone who you could give great responsibility to, knowing that he had the capacity and integrity to deliver what was required.
It was with great regret that we accepted that Mark was returning to Australia, as I was very keen to secure him in a full time position within GartnerGroup.”
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Store-It-Cheap is a successful self-storage company that required finance to expand and move to a larger site.
The company engaged us to build a financial model that forecast the cash-flows of the land purchase and the subsequent expansion of capacity and revenue. This helped to size-up and shape the required debt and it provided much-needed comfort for the lending bank.
The result was a successful lending arrangement, land purchase and huge growth in the business.
Simon Vergers, CEO:
“I engaged Mark to build a financial model for a business loan application. I could not have been happier with his work and would have no hesitation in recommending him.
He has a great grasp on complex aspects of finance and accounting. He is thorough and has excellent attention to detail. He challenged and tested important assumptions and built a sophisticated level of scenario analysis.
In addition to his technical skills, I found Mark to be a highly intelligent, articulate and polite person of outstanding character. He does what he says he is going to do, when he says he's going to do it.
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Dot Loves Data is a successful data consultancy that supplies a suite of proprietary analytics tools, providing real-time strategic insights to corporate customers, governments and NGOs.
Dot needed the capability to forecast sales and to test scenarios in order to improve pricing, client-targetting and to predict staff recruitment requirements.
Wiseworth was contracted to built a three-way financial model to forecast profit, cashflow and balance sheet, with full scenario manager allowing the flexing of key inputs.
Jessica Parkin, Financial Controller:
We worked with Mark to build a revenue model for our growing data science company.
This was a new experience for us and Mark was able to lead us through every step of the way. He is patient and listens to the needs of the customer before coming up with creative solutions to help your business.
Working through this process with Mark forced us to really focus on our pricing strategy to ensure it is suitable for future growth. It was a valuable experience and we have been delivered a model which is both flexible and can grow with our business.
Throughout the process Mark provided a calm and supportive service offering even when our model needs changed more than once.
I would be very happy to work with Mark in the future and am pleased to recommend his services. -
In Yangon, the capital of Myanmar, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)) had established a series of HIV/AIDS clinics that it wanted to spin-off into a separate operation under a new NGO. To do so, it had to attract funding from large multilateral development funds run by the United Nations. This required a full business plan and financial model.
MSF engaged us to build a five-year financial model that forecasted clinic and head office costs, patient numbers, drug costs, death rates, financing from global NGOs and other revenues, plus scenario analysis.
The result was successful refinancing and the establishment of a new NGO, Medical Action Myanmar, which is still saving lives today.