Shot Scope and Forvis Mazars; teeing up financial success

An immediate need  

To be a successful entrepreneur, having a good idea is seldom enough. Luckily, David Hunter had done an extensive ‘apprenticeship’ through working in design engineering consultancy, to appreciate the crucial nature of product commercialisation, including fund-raising, investor liaison and detailed financial reporting.

Having the right team around you is equally important however and, just as Shot Scope was rapidly scaling up and approaching crucial rounds of development fund-raising, they parted company with their start-up FD. This left the company with substantial challenges and a race against time to get everything they needed into place.  

Hitting the ground running

David says, “Shot Scope first came into being in 2012 and I wish I had known about Forvis Mazars then.  

I think it would have been really beneficial from the earliest stages of start-up and funding activities to have been able to use their ‘FD on demand’ interim resource support service. As it was, we were several years in and the business was moving really quickly by the time we were introduced".  

As an outsourced financial management team, we immediately assumed responsibility for building more robust systems, primarily around P&L accounting, nominal code structure and financial reporting.

Our UK team was able to introduce new sales management technology to Shot Scope, integrating it seamlessly to deliver faster and more accurate financial information.

We were also able to assist with R&D, audit, tax and compliance advice; offering multi-service-line support, as required. 

David says, “Lots of areas needed attention, such as our R&D tax credits. The Forvis Mazars’ team went above and beyond to quickly provide a fully-outsourced, back-office, finance function. They also provided advice and support which I really valued, having spent nearly six months trying to look after the finances on my own.

By the time we took on our brilliant new FD, Dean Anderson in May 2020, our financial systems, policies and procedures were in much better shape. This provided a solid foundation for Dean, giving him time to concentrate on planning for further growth through expanding our international operations."

What makes an entrepreneur?

David describes his early career, following an engineering design degree, as being full-on. “I was an electronic and embedded software engineering specialist, with a talent for moving projects quickly.

I was able to develop my skills in commercialisation and setting up early production processes – but became burnt out with the hours I was working and decided on a complete career-change.

I went back to Edinburgh University to become a teacher but, while back at Uni, I attended entrepreneurial events which sent me on a different path again.”

David is a keen golfer and had for some time been wandering around golf courses clutching notebooks. Eight, full notebooks later, he had manually entered the data he gathered into a spreadsheet – reducing his own handicap from 16-5 as a result.   

He couldn’t find appropriate software to simplify this knowledge-gathering and analysis however, - and the idea for Shot Scope was born.

The importance of financial process and information    

After just three months at University, David had raised £20k in seed-capital.

He also entered Shot Scope into the annual Innovate UK competition when it was little more than conceptual; winning £25k in funding against start-ups with much greater longevity.

“I knew I could build the tech but I like to drive a project at pace. After two years, I had raised £500k through private investment and another £250k in grants but this was never going to be enough to scale up effectively.”

Simon Sweeney, Accounting and Outsourcing Director at Forvis Mazars, comments, “Tech companies typically have heavy investment requirements to effectively commercialise, before potential competition enters the market.

So it was for Shot Scope. It was growing incredibly quickly by 2019 but in danger of being derailed by financial processes which could neither continue to support this level of growth, nor meet the increasingly sophisticated needs of investors in later rounds of funding.

Shot Scope is now actively going global, with sights firmly set on America, which contributed a 50% increase in sales in the first year alone.

This diversification of sales means operating in different legislative procedures in different countries and territories. Being a global firm ourselves, this is something which Forvis Mazars can support.”    

As David prepares to board another plane to the US, he says, 

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