W.A. Campion's part-time CFO perfect for Zirc Dental Products
OUR CLIENT
Zirc Dental Products, Inc.
Buffalo, MN
CLIENT DETAIL
For over 50 years Zirc has manufactured innovative products sold around the world that allow dental teams to be happier and work more efficiently. They have an extensive line of time-saving products that accomplish their goal to increase efficiency, reduce stress, improve infection control and elevate the patient experience in the dental practice.
SITUATION
Like a lot of small business owners, Nicole Marquette the President of Zirc, was struggling to find the right person that she could trust to handle Zirc’s high-level financial and accounting functions within the budget constraints of a small business and still provide the detail reporting and accounting of costs they needed to make the right business decisions.
CRITICAL BUSINESSS ISSUES
Zirc’s accounting systems were not doing an accurate job of accounting for product costs causing margins to vary as much as 5% and thus hurting financial performance. Zirc had an excellent sales team but they were not equipped with proper analysis tools to allow them to sell products at the most profitable levels
PRIMARY CAPABILITIES
Nicole Marquette came to Bill Campion with this challenge. She said she needed a trusted financial advisor she could rely on to perform the company’s high level financial functions with a high level of expertise and professionalism. The duties would include overseeing the accounting staff, financial statement preparation, budgeting and creating a new cost accounting system as well as advising her and other company leaders on financial related decisions. The big challenge was that as this was a very important role within Zirc it did not need to be a full-time position if the right processes and systems were in place.
WHAT W.A. CAMPION PROVIDED
Bill Campion stepped into the CFO role at Zirc on a part-time basis which provided the oversight and separation of duties Zirc sought. In addition Bill and his team created new costing system for both manufacturing and assembly, prepare all annual and monthly budgets, do daily monitoring of all sales, account receivable, accounts payable and cash flow, designed sales analysis tools to show sales and profit growth by product (Zirc has 1,600+ products). W.A. Campion also provides consulting and planning to ensure Zirc’s tax liability is as low as possible and well as manage fixed asset purchase to take full advantage of the new tax laws. W.A. Campion also handles payroll and payroll taxes and prepare all financial statements so that things that need to stay confidential stay that way. Lastly Bill’s team implemented Traction’s EOS® (Entrepreneurial Operating System®) a comprehensive business system, integrating a holistic business model with a complete set of simple business tools proven business process to align and synchronize all the pieces of Zirc’s business to produce the results they wanted.
RESULTS
As a result of the daily monitoring and monthly budget reviews there are virtually no surprises to the leadership group at Zirc. They are aware of where they stand at all time from a financial standpoint. Their new cost accounting systems while not perfect has reduced the margin errors to under 1%. The sales team has a clear vision of how profitable each sale will be and can focus time on selling more profitable products. W.A. Campion observed the high turnover in the manufacturing positions within Zirc and discovered it was caused by their current wages being under the market rate, once corrected the turnover issue virtually disappeared. Finally Traction EOS® has the leadership team aligned on the same page, focused on the things that matter most and given them a process to uncover small issues before they become big issues.