Why Galayev & Co use Fathom to advise The Dragons from Dragons’ Den UK

Galayev & Co advise some of the biggest names in business in the UK. These names include investors Nick Jenkins, Touker Suleyman, Tej Lalvani, Jenny Campbell from the hit TV show Dragons' Den.Above: Jenny Campbell, Dragon's Den (Left) and Stepan Galaev, Founder and Investment Director at Galayev & Co (Right).

The firm is the first multi-family office for angel investors in the UK. Their goal is to provide bespoke, comprehensive and consistent solutions to investors. The team of high-profile consultants from the venture capital, legal and financial industries, work to deliver expert reassurance throughout each clients’ investment journey.

Exploring cloud based solutions

Galayev & Co are moving away from desktop applications and manual data input, to real-time cloud based software solutions. Cloud software provides leading firms with the opportunity to increase productivity and offer new value to their clients.

The firm has felt the full impact of a rapidly changing technological landscape. They’re on the front foot with the change to cloud based accounting, and use Xero to manage their financials. They also require clients to adopt Xero as a condition for working with the firm.

Understanding time saving with the cloud

Galayev & Co recognised the need to provide meaningful financial analysis to their clients, and initially had difficulty finding the best method. Stepan Galaev, Founder and Investment Director at Galayev & Co, realised Excel reporting was taking twenty hours a month.

At the rate of £27 an hour, the total came in at £540 pounds each month! In an industry that still relies heavily on Excel, Stepan’s situation is not unusual. Yet as the business grew, Stepan quickly worked out that reporting in Excel had some flaws for their reporting requirements –

• It wasn’t an efficient and scalable solution
• It didn’t reflect the professionalism that Galayev and Co needed or wanted to portray.

Discovering Fathom

After coming to the realisation that they needed another solution, Stepan began trialling four cloud solutions that offered financial reporting and analysis. Stepan set out to find a product that met the following requirements –

• Seamless integration with Xero
• Automatic data update each day
• Highly customisable financial reports and templates
• Ability to compare budgets against actuals in financial statements

Stepan says they started to look at developing their own in-house portfolio reporting and analytics software right before they started a free trial with Fathom.

"We were looking to develop an in-house portfolio reporting software. Luckily after careful market research and multiple trials we found Fathom."

The journey with Fathom

Stepan found getting started with Fathom simple. First, he spoke to the UK based Fathom team and asked a couple of product questions. He then used Fathom’s Help Centre to guide him through the set-up process.

A highlight for Stepan was seeing first hand the seamless connection between Fathom and Xero. In a matter of seconds, he had extracted the Charts of Accounts from Xero into Fathom. Connecting to Xero means data automatically updates each night so the monthly, quarterly and annual results are always up to date. 
Stepan selected Fathom based on the following parameters –

• Integrates directly with Xero
• Cloud based product
• Great user experience
• Scalable solution
• Ability to white label reporting
• Professional looking reports

Once the data was flowing, Stepan took full advantage of white labelling with Fathom. He uploaded Galayev and Co’s logo and colour scheme so that reports were personalised with their brand. He also invited a number of Galayev & Co’s clients to Fathom, allowing each of them to see their business performance immediately.

The reporting experience

Stepan believes the highly customisable reporting platform within Fathom is beneficial, allowing Galayev & Co to design reporting templates to suit the specific requirements of each client. The firm have also set up report schedules so that templates are automatically populated at the specified time each month and sent off to the client.

“We’ve automated the reporting process and it’s saving us a lot of time in terms of manual work, portfolio reports for multiple enterprises has solved the scalability issue for us as well."

Improved accuracy, increased efficiency and beautiful design

Fathom’s reporting and analysis app provides a boost to data accuracy, efficiency and design. Stepan believes that there is less room for human error now that the data is automatically filled into Fathom templates from Xero. On top this, Stepan believes that the time taken to produce reports has reduced by more than 3x compared to Excel reporting.

“As our monthly/quarterly report preparation takes quite some time, we can easily say that we have saved at least 10% on labour costs as a result.”

An elegant experience for clients

Stepan says that Galayev & Co’s clients have a better experience as a result of receiving reports generated by Fathom. He notes that Fathom is a app for communication with clients, and enables quicker reaction times under pressure. Stepan has also found Fathom to be instrumental in helping Galayev & Co deliver better overall portfolio performance.

"Fathom has allowed better custom KPI monitoring and visibility, our client’s investees now have the tools to track P&L as well as cash flow performance on a monthly basis.”

A worthwhile investment for new age advisors

Stepan believes that Fathom is a must-have reporting and analysis app for any new age advisory or accounting firm looking to provide a better solution to their clients. Stepan is looking to add further companies to Fathom and sees it as an app that can be leveraged to help drive further growth at Galayev & Co.

Would you like to learn more about Galayev & Co or Stepan Galaev?

Reach out to Stepan at hello@galayev.com.

Want to find out more about Fathom?

Start transforming financial data into business intelligence with our suite of analysis dashboards and reports. Use Fathom to assess and understand key aspects including KPIs, cash flow, profitability, growth and more.

Visit our Xero page to get started on a free trial and to see how we can help you grow or visit our Features page to learn more.