Identify what is holding the business back. Then fix it.
SAI Advisory works with small and medium-sized businesses across South London. A short, structured review of how the business runs identifies where time and money are being lost. The fix — usually a purpose-built system, sometimes simply a better process — is then designed and built by the same practice that found the problem. One point of contact throughout.
Review the business.
Build the fix.
Business review
Most small and medium-sized businesses are not badly run. They have grown past the way they were originally set up, and too much now depends on the owner personally. The review examines how the business actually operates day to day — how work comes in, how it is quoted, scheduled, delivered and invoiced, and where things fall between the gaps. It concludes with a short written report setting out what is costing the business, approximately how much, and what should be addressed first.
Systems and automation
Where the answer is a system, SAI Advisory builds it. A quoting tool to replace the spreadsheet. Automated reminders and follow-ups by text and email, so that enquiries are not left to go cold. Clear reporting on which jobs made money and which did not. Integration of the separate pieces of software that currently do not talk to each other. Built around how the business works rather than bought off the shelf, and priced for a business of this size rather than for a corporate.
Always in
this order.
Nothing is built until the business has been properly understood. Buying software before the problem is clear is how most firms end up with software nobody uses.
Review
A matter of days, not weeks, with time on site where it is useful. Conversations with the owner and with the people doing the work, a review of the numbers and the existing systems, and direct observation of how things are actually done — which is frequently not how the owner believes they are done.
Report
A written document, not a slide deck. What was found, what it is costing, and what should be fixed first and why. Some items the business will resolve itself within a week. Some require building. Some are not worth the effort, and the report says so rather than recommending work for its own sake.
Build
Where something is worth building, it is quoted at a fixed price for a fixed scope before work begins. The business owns everything that is delivered — the code and the accounts it runs on — with no ongoing subscription to SAI Advisory.
Who this is for
The founder
SAI Advisory was founded by Ahmed Imam, previously a credit analyst at a US distressed-debt fund in London covering European companies. The work involved deciding whether to lend to businesses under strain, which requires establishing quickly how a company really makes its money, where it is losing it, and whether the people running it know. He did so across more than forty transactions and a monitored portfolio of over two hundred businesses.
The practice applies the same discipline to businesses considerably closer to home — where that kind of scrutiny has rarely been applied, and where, unlike at a fund, the findings can actually be acted on.
Economics, University of Cambridge · CFA Level I · Croydon, South London
A thirty-minute introductory call. No charge, no obligation.
Describe what is not working. SAI Advisory will say plainly whether it can help and, if not, who can.