Background
Lucy Cohen and Sophie Hughes have been best friends since the age of eleven. They founded Mazuma in 2006 after discovering first hand that the traditional accountancy model was not appropriate for micro and very small businesses. From small beginnings Mazuma had been successfully grown to an award-winning accountancy service covering the whole of the UK.
Mazuma appointed Mustard as their trusted business advisers to make sure that they were still on the right track, to focus on the next steps and to hold them accountable.
Challenges
Lucy and Sophie had already done a lot of work on building a sustainable business and only needed to work four days a week in the business. They were comfortable but felt that they needed to be challenged to continue to build on the business that they had built.
How we helped
- We took Mazuma through our Mustard Diagnostic that looked at all aspects of the business, how well they were documented, how well they were applied, how effective they were and who was responsible.
- The resultant report showed how much value had been created in the business, and how much was yet to be created, across all the different functions of the business.
- A traffic lighted action report that was produced prioritised the actions that were needed to be able to continue to scale the business.
- Working closely with Lucy, Sophie and the management team, we were able identify the areas of business that would help to create more value in the business.
- We introduced a dashboard to monitor and track all aspects of the business.
Outcomes
- Lucy and Sophie had renewed vigour and accountability to continue the successful growth of Mazuma.
- A novel system for rating the service they provided to their clients helped them to focus on customer service and obtain exceptional client satisfaction scores.
- All members of the team were fully immersed in the Mazuma culture and clear about their role in achieving the company vision, resulting above industry average staff satisfaction scores.
- We completed the systemisation of the business so that Lucy and Sophie were able to reduce their time working in the business to three days a week.
- Mazuma won the Accounts and Tax Adviser of the year in the British Small Business Awards 2018.
Testimonial
Working with Mustard has been fantastic for our business. It’s very easy to become complacent when you have been running a business for many years. Having a trusted adviser to be accountable to was absolutely invaluable. Working with an expert outside of your own business is also a fantastic way to shed new light on old challenges – using Mustard we were able to work through old and new challenges with the benefit of a fresh set of eyes. We are now ready for the next stage of our expansion and have undoubtedly got there faster by using Mustard.
Lucy Cohen, Co-Founder and Commercial Director.
