
Hello, I’m Kevin Appleby, The Business Accountant’s Mentor
I help you, the business accountant, transform your business in the next 100 days
My mission is to help you become a visionary business accountant equipped for the new challenges of the 2020’s.
Ive spent my career as a Chartered Accountant and management consultant helping organisations like yours better understand what drives success, and helping drive digital transformation. That might be helping you understand the true cost of the products and services your organisation supplies and the customers you serve. I help my consulting clients understand the economics of their business model and reshape it to maximise value. Ive helped private sector clients optimise profits and public sector clients deliver better value for money.
I’ve been at the heart of business change projects for over 20 years, often supplying the key numbers that shape the transformation to the management team. Numbers and insight that their own finance people were unable to provide. These days I still consult, but I spend most of my time passing these skills on to other accountants and finance people like you. Most finance teams are too embedded in the accounts and the reporting spreadsheets to step back and understand the real picture. I’ll help you build your skills, use the right tools and techniques, and create the time that will allow you to become a vital and visionary member of your business team. In the 2020s you need to be a very different accountant to your predecessors. You need to be tech savvy, embrace change and learn to use your unique insight to advise your colleagues. Its a tall order!
Do you need help supporting your organisation to maximise value or reduce cost? To set Zero Based Budgets that focus your managers on the organisation’s priorities? Maybe you need help with strategy and business plans, or maybe you struggle to report the right information to let you know you are on course to deliver those plans?
I can help through coaching and mentoring, through delivering training for you and your team, or with hands on consulting support to get the change project done.
The challenge for the 21st century accountant is to be vital and not functional. If you are functional you risk extinction.
Remember the weaver?
No, didn’t think you would.
That’s because he became extinct early in the industrial revolution. Highly skilled and vital to the textile industry as he was, he was replaced by a machine.
The accountant could easily be the next weaver. Automation and AI are revolutionising the back office. You could be automated out of a job. In a future of driverless cars we won’t need accountants to crunch the numbers. Let’s face it, everything interfaces to everything else these days. Making tax digital? Automated filing of accounts? It’s happening already. All the functional jobs in the back office are disappearing.
So, are you a vital member of your business team? If not then you need to be. You need the skills that get you out of the back office.
Listen to Kevin Appleby every week on The Next 100 Days Podcast
The Next 100 Days Podcast is a leading UK business show. Through this podcast, Kevin and Graham reveal strategies you can use to improve your business and take it to the next level. In addition to featuring their own advice, Kevin Appleby and Graham Arrowsmith host amazing guests from across the business world. Often the guests are successful, but lesser-known business owners and entrepreneurs, enabling the show to bring fresh content and stand out from many of the US based business shows.
Graham and Kevin believe that business change comes about when a business owner focusses on just one thing that will make a real difference to his business. That might be product development, a new product launch or a marketing campaign. Focussing for less than 100 days, or focussing on too many things generally won’t deliver the results you need, Equally, its difficult to maintain effective focus for much longer than 100 days without re-assessing priorities.
The Next 100 Days Podcast is your source to learn how to move your business forward, with practical advice and guidance that you can put into action and make a difference in your own organisation within the next 100 days.

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