CFO SURGERY: Getting to the ‘Blue Sky’ of Agency Growth

“Forecasting, in the volatility of today’s market, is borderline impossible.”

That’s the refreshing take from James Brazier, finance director of Billion Dollar Boy (BDB).

While many agencies treat the ‘blue sky’ – the period beyond their immediate 6-week visibility – as a guessing game, James has spent a decade building the rigid data frameworks required to quantify the unknown.

With 160 in headcount across the UK and US and a top-line growth rate of 40%, BDB cannot afford to hire on a whim.

“If we could have three months of visibility, that would solve all our problems,” James explains.

In the rapidly shifting sector of influencer marketing, BDB can’t justify a ‘plug and play’ model in freelance talent, so James has turned to technology to bridge the gap. By leveraging a custom CRM infrastructure, BDB crunches years of historical data to automate pipeline probability.

James, along with Ollie Bryden from Spendesk, will be pulling back the curtain on the tools that turned BDB to passing around a shared Amex for the team’s finances, into a precision-engineered growth machine.

If you want to learn how to move your finance function from recording the past, to being able to see the ‘blue sky’ of your future pipeline, this is the session for you.