Fund Cog Makes The World Go Round

Turnover is high, and you're turning a nice profit, thank you very much, but somehow or other it isn't adding up on your bank balance. Even worse, you're squeezed for cash and the task of balancing the demands of creditors with slow payments from customers threatens to put you out of business. They say money makes the world go round, and if that's true, then the want of money can stop your world spinning fairly abruptly.

The Moneyspinning Accountant

This nightmare scenario prompted this week's Kickstart Your Business featured guest Garret Carragher to dream up a new service, Fund Cog, which aims to get the wheels of finance turning round again. As a management accountant working in the Irish multinational space, Garret saw the importance of cash flow as the lifeblood of the business.

He also saw that many SMEs struggled to link the various financial systems that supply money into and out of the business, resulting in some of them going to the wall. And so he determined to put that right, by setting up a service that seamlessly integrates with your financial software and manages both credit control and funding for your business.

Man & The Machine

Both George and Gerard reckoned Fund Cog to be a great idea, but Gerard wondered if Garret needed to do more to address a typical customer concern around the sometimes delicate relationship between a business and its customers, particularly when it comes to collecting money. But Garret reminded us that Fund Cog combines an effective online system with a team of expert financial controllers who can judge the best balance of actions required to make sure you get paid.

What Do You Reckon?

What more can Garret do to make his man and the machine service more attractive to both business owners and their accountants and bookkeepers? Listen back to Garret on Kickstart Your Business and let us know what you suggest.

We'd love to hear from you.

Kickstart Your Business is broadcast live on The Right Hook on Newstalk 106 in Ireland every Thursday at 6.15pm, and is available to listen to on Playback immediately afterwards.

The Ultimate Team Players

When an athlete suffers a catastrophic injury whilst playing their favourite sport, their team-mates, family and friends are typically quick to race into action to raise funds to cover the costs of treatment and ongoing medical and care bills (often running into the millions). The difficulty is that no matter how generous and well-intentioned the community is, many of those embarking on such ambitious fund-raising are doing so for the first time, and will often struggle to come to terms with the requirements of raising vast sums of money very quickly.

The Greatest Team Ever

When his cousin Stuart Mangan suffered a catastrophic injury whilst playing rugby, Eamonn Sayers, our featured guest on Kickstart Your Business this week, was inspired to join the fundraising efforts of family and friends. Eamonn's experience of the difficulties, almost impossibilities, faced by eager fundraisers to raise enormous sums of money in a very short period of time prompted him to develop World Sports Team, an online platform enabling sports fans everywhere to support the fallen athletes in their own communities by participating in a global network.

The Game Of Our Lives

Whilst George and Gerard applauded this extraordinary initiative, Gerard suggested that whilst the call to join the World Sports Team is compelling, it's not clear to the online fan 'what game we're playing', what's involved in being a member of the team, and how one more person signing up changes anything.

Given that people relate best to people rather than ideals, he suggested that Eamonn introduce more of the sports personalities who are supporting the initiative to explain why they're joining the World Sports Team and how they hope to make a difference.

The Ball Is In Your Court

What more can Eamonn do to build the greatest team the world has ever seen and support players with catastrophic injuries? Listen back to Eamonn on Kickstart Your Business and let us know what you suggest.

We'd love to hear from you.

Kickstart Your Business is broadcast live on The Right Hook on Newstalk 106 in Ireland every Thursday at 6.15pm, and is available to listen to on Playback immediately afterwards.

Spilling The Cool Beans On Tasty Business

Back in the day, beanz in Ireland meant either those baked in tomato sauce from the company who promised us 57 varieties but only appeared to offer one (that always puzzled the young Gerard), or their homegrown equivalent served up by the lovable bachelor twins, Beany & Barney. But whatever way you dressed them up, baked beans struggled to jump up from the bottom of the food chain.

Not so surprising then that in the Tannam household at least, beans on toast was seen as something of a poor man's choice, something to keep the wolf from the door until the larder was stocked with real food again.

The Beaning Of Life (or The Life Of Beans!)

Now thanks to the efforts of our Kickstart Your Business guest, Isolde Johnson, beanz meanz something entirely different and much more adventurous. Isolde and her business partner Sarah O'Connor, have set up Cool Beans, a food company that introduces an even more nutritious, tastier bean to the Irish market. With flavours including original tomato, smokey and chilli, Cool Beans' meal in a pot are reinventing beans for a whole new generation. 

Eeny, Beany, Miney, More

Gerard and George applauded the eye-catching, immediate design of the Cool Beans packaging, which really does a great job in jumping off the shelf in the cool fridge at Supervalus across Ireland.

Gerard also remarked on how Cool Beans seem to have natural appeal to fitness enthusiasts who are particularly fulsome in their praise of this ready steady go meal. Smart brands typically find a core niche from which to grow their market, and fitness enthusiasts would seem to fit the bill for Sarah and Isolde.

Over To You

What more can Isolde and Sarah do to become the bean-all and end-all of the ready-meal market? Listen back to Isolde on Kickstart Your Business and let us know what you suggest.

We'd love to hear from you.

Kickstart Your Business is broadcast live on The Right Hook on Newstalk 106 in Ireland every Thursday at 6.15pm, and is available to listen to on Playback immediately afterwards.

Pleased To QMeeto

No-one is more concerned about having the right person in the right place at the right time every time than the meeting planner, who must often juggle everyone's schedule as well as their own in order to deliver a successful event.

Although there are many tools available to the organiser, the emphasis in a great number of the software tools on the market is on sales, the proverbial 'bums on seats'. But what if not just any bum or just any seat will do?

Meeting Needs

Our featured guest on Kickstart Your Business, Maurice Murphy of QMeeto, had grappled with this problem on behalf of clients (many of them in the healthcare sector) for many years and found none of the tools available to him or his clients were fit for purpose.

Maurice decided to develop his own software, one that took the complexity out of managing the itineraries of as many as hundreds of people, and provided a simple and intuitive platform for meeting planners.

Gathering Momentum

Gerard admired the smart visuals that Maurice has deployed in order to illustrate what QMeeto does and how it works (the image on the left is one such example) and the intuitive way in which the QMeeto website operates.

However, given the importance of referrals in the meetings market, he also suggests that Maurice may be missing opportunities in the way he has populated his own LinkedIn profile (which should mirror and support his QMeeto offering wherever possible). For example, why use the title CEO (which isn't especially helpful to potential clients looking for his help)? Instead, Meeting Software Specialist or similar will point others towards his profile (and onward to his website).

Over To You

What more can Maurice do to meet the needs of event planners? Listen back to Maurice and QMeeto on Kickstart Your Business and let us know what you suggest.

We'd love to hear from you.

Kickstart Your Business is broadcast live on The Right Hook on Newstalk 106 in Ireland every Thursday at 6.15pm, and is available to listen to on Playback immediately afterwards.