No more gut decisions in cash flow planning and company management: hhpberlin
Stefan Truthän, Managing Partner of hhpberlin, engineers for fire protection Ltd., explains how Agicap helped his company to identify unnecessary costs.
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Key takeaways
Managing directors like Stefan Truthän often only have the account balance as an absolute key figure to make business decisions.
The account balance alone is not enough for future-oriented organisation and management of the company.
Whereas Truthän, as managing partner of hhpberlin, used to have to listen to his gut feeling, the combination of Agicap Cashflow and CashCollect provides a much more accurate system.
In addition to the faster, more transparent and automated processing of the most important financial management tasks, Agicap also helped to identify and optimise costs in the organisation. As a result, a large seven-figure sum was saved.
The combination of Agicap Payment with Agicap CashCollect allows for something that we did not have before: a new way of working in which better planning contributes to the management of the organisation.
8
locations all over Germany
200
employees
More than 1 million
euros saved thanks to Agicap
hhpberlin
Customer’s history
Stefan Truthän, managing partner of the fire protection engineering service provider hhpberlin, had long wanted an easy-to-use cashflow planning tool that would support him in finding and making strategic business decisions. For this reason, hhpberlin extensively tested Agicap to find out whether it provides an effective overview of the company's liquidity.
hhpberlin is not only active in Germany, but worldwide. More than 200 employees manage complex special construction projects such as the construction of high-rise buildings, tunnels, airports, railway stations and stadiums. hhpberlin now manages more than 1,000 such projects simultaneously.
With Agicap, a tool has been established at hhpberlin that has enabled us to interpret cash management and cash flow in a completely new way.
With an average annual growth in turnover of ten per cent over the last 20 years, the number of projects managed by hhpberlin has also steadily increased. It has become increasingly difficult to maintain an overview of the financing of each individual project. It was also a challenge to monitor liquidity across all projects and across the company.
Often, hhpberlin has to pre-finance for several months before an interim invoice is issued for a project: A massive challenge for maintaining the company's liquidity, which is very difficult to master without accurate planning.
Agicap made an end to gut decisions.
Customer’s needs
Greater transparency: at best, a daily overview of the cash flow within an individual project and the company-wide cash flows
More overview: a clear presentation of liquidity both for one company and in a consolidated view across all companies
More planning security: a fine-meshed presentation of the data situation and a forecasting function that clearly shows the expected expenditure and costs in all projects
Basic compatibility: a cloud-based software that can be integrated with all existing business accounts and financial tools in the company
Fast support and continuous development of the tool with an open ear for customer requests
Solution
In Agicap, Stefan Truthän finally found the solution that met his minimum requirements. He and his employees tested Agicap extensively and were enthusiastic because the tool offered everything they wanted for cash flow planning in the company.
The forecasting function in Agicap has become an indispensable tool for Stefan Truthän. With its help, he has created several cash flow scenarios that are fed daily with the current account transactions and thus kept up-to-date.
All these capabilities, in one solution, is how we identified a large seven-figure amount of optimisation, and only Agicap helped us to make this data discernible. Agicap has managed to demystify cash flow for hhpberlin.
For example, the managing director looks at the impact a 50 per cent slump in projects would have on the company's liquidity. On the other hand, he has also created a scenario that assumes above-average growth of 20 per cent. In this way, Stefan Truthän sees the entire spectrum on which the company's liquidity could move. This gives him the opportunity to make provisions for such scenarios in advance and to sound out escape routes.
In addition to Agicap Cashflow, Stefan Truthän also makes extensive use of Agicap CashCollect to optimise working capital. With the replacement of an isolated solution for the dunning process with CashCollect, many costs have been saved in the company. With CashCollect, hhpberlin was even able to almost halve the collection period and motivate customers to pay their invoices more quickly.
Conclusion
Smart business decisions should not be made by looking at the account balance. A more differentiated cash flow monitoring is key.
The combination of Agicap CashFlow and CashCollect offers more efficient processes in financial management.
You no longer need a gut feeling when it comes to cost savings and optimising working capital if you have the relevant data at hand at all times.
Other testimonials of interest
Hertha BSC
Business Sector:
Professional sports
Where:
Berlin, Germany
Cashflow Problem:
Coordinating payment flows is a challenging process that involves communicating with accounting and manually updating Excel tables, which can be very tedious.
Hornberger Consulting
Business Sector:
Business services
Where:
Hamburg, Germany
Cashflow Problem:
Anticipate cash flow shortages beforehand, craft scenarios that are based on actual financial data, extend ERP-systems with cash flow management capabilities
M2A Media
Business Sector:
Media Agency
Where:
London, United Kingdom
Cashflow Problem:
Manage multiple entities during internalization, managing different currencies and different banking providers
