16 Feb Mettle Analytics for small companies and start-ups

One of life’s ironies is that people who could benefit the most from professional services can’t afford it. Yet a short conversation with an experienced professional can mean the difference between a company pushing through or burning. If not a conversation, then an intuitive tool to frame decisions and actions. The Mettle Corporate and Specialised Finance team developed a solution to help small businesses and start-ups, which is freely available on their website.
https://mettle.net/businesses/corporate-and-specialised-finance

Free for small businesses, start-ups and their accountants.
As Covid-19 bit deep, the highly specialised Mettle Corporate and Specialised Finance team considered ways to assist small businesses and start-ups. The senior team of William Marais, Werner Maree, Michael Hodgson and Cedric Nkuna developed Mettle Analytics, a free online tool which can help companies to generate more cash, calculate its cash runway and understand its return on equity. In addition, at a time where more value is increasingly expected from service providers, Mettle Analytics enables small accounting firms to extend their offering in a meaningful way.

“Mettle’s target audience is the corporate and mid-sized company sector, so our corporate advisory model was not a sustainable solution for small businesses and start-ups. We needed to provide appropriate and intuitive technology and let the numbers speak to the users,” says William Marais, director of Mettle Corporate and Specialised Finance.

Increase in start-ups.
With so much unemployment in South Africa, people will be forced to become entrepreneurs. But maybe 20% of small businesses make it to 10 years and as many as 90% of small e-commerce start-ups fail within 6 months. One of Mettle Analytics applications, the understanding of a company’s cash runway, can greatly improve chances of success. The cash runway is much like an aeroplane running out of runway. It is the time it takes for a company with a finite amount of capital to run out of cash unless it generates sufficient revenue in that time. It sounds simple enough but many small businesses with depleted reserves or start-ups with limited funding get to end-game stage before trying to take action or raise additional capital. It is often too late – the runway has ended.

The drive behind Mettle Analytics.
“When companies struggle or close, people lose their jobs and families go hungry. When families go hungry, children cannot concentrate at school which results in the loss of hope and unrealised potential. A failed company does not only impact the owner. While the failure of companies due to COVID-19 and the economy in general was predictable, many companies fail simply because they do not have access to or understanding of key fundamentals.

We have seen the commendable efforts in the private sector of community feeding programmes over these last months and Mettle Analytics was our way of contributing to the same cause but in a different way.”

Visit https://mettle.net/businesses/corporate-and-specialised-finance to access Mettle Analytics.

William Marais
T: + 27 21 929 4884
E: Wmarais@mettle.net