A unique turnkey solution to meet the finance needs of clients

Hutcheon Mearns

The firm, Hutcheon Mearns, with offices in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow, operates under the pillars of deals, people and insights. It prides itself on offering a full-service finance solution.

Claire Clark, managing director - specialists at Hutcheon Mearns, is responsible for helping client finance teams find the right finance resource solution for them from the unique range offered by the business. She oversees the accountancy support, automation and in-house interim teams but can also access the external candidate market through the business’s resourcing team.

Claire is a KPMG-trained Chartered Accountant (CA) who initially worked in audit and then transactions services, or financial diligence. She moved to become group financial controller of private-equity backed Triton Group and has lectured at Robert Gordon University. She joined Hutcheon Mearns shortly after it was founded by her former KPMG colleague Craig Hutcheon.

Explaining Hutcheon Mearns’ unique full-service finance solution, Claire says: “As accountants ourselves we understand there are finance projects that need to be completed, but will substantially impact ‘business as usual’ finance delivery.

“Traditionally the options were to find temporary staff via a recruitment agency, who you couldn't guarantee would stay to complete the project, or secondees from accountancy firms who often hadn't worked in the industry and therefore had to be trained.

“Our offering provides an efficient, turnkey solution. Our service lines are integrated and provide the flexibility for us to offer the best range of solutions for our clients.”

Claire gives an example scenario of a financial controller resigning from a client firm. Any prospective candidate is likely to be on a notice period of around three months. As the search process could take up to eight weeks, the client is likely to face a significant resourcing gap. The answer is for Hutcheon Mearns’ resourcing team to run the permanent recruitment search, while its employed specialist team provides an interim to cover the role, providing the client with stability. The specialists are contracted for the full period of the assignment, and can therefore ensure a smooth handover process.

“We have also worked on projects where our deals team is supporting a business with its sale, but there is a need for better data to ensure a productive sale and diligence process,” says Claire. “Our insights team can develop more accessible and fuller data through Power BI dashboards. This reduces manual intervention and provides better responses to diligence queries.”

Claire adds that Hutcheon Mearns works with clients throughout their growth cycle. It can provide outsourced finance in the early stages, so clients do not need their own in-house team. As the client expands, it can help recruit a permanent internal team to underpin growing needs and finance project support for peak periods.

She explains that Hutcheon Mearns’ holistic service stands alone in the market. “Other providers are more disparate, for example they are recruiters who don’t understand the ins and outs of how accountants work,” says Claire. “If a client wants to look to other accountancy firms for a secondee, such firms are often limited to the services they can provide as they may also be the auditor which can raise independence concerns, as highlighted in the Financial Reporting Council's Revised Ethical Standard in January 2024. We’re a non-audit services firm which ensures our impartiality when working with other accountancy companies.”

Focusing on the benefits of the full-service solution, Claire says: “The client has the advantage of partnering with a like-minded accountant who has been in their shoes, and therefore knows how best to help. This gives a stable resource provision, not offered by the traditional temp market, and creates a true partnership.”

Claire says Hutcheon Means constantly evolves to meet the needs of clients and to encourage the development of its own team. One area it is currently developing is sustainability reporting. It already has colleagues undertaking an ICAS-recognised certification covering sustainability strategy, risk and reporting.

“We’ve had clients asking how we can help them with sustainability reporting. As a result we have invested in training for some of the team so that they can support this developing area. “A lot of large corporates will have their own specialist sustainability teams. We’re working more with mid-tier companies who don’t have the in-house knowledge and therefore have asked if we can support them in this area. It’s a testament to the relationships we have with our clients that they come to us and ask for our support.”

Claire concludes: “Our firm has been set up in a way that puts us in the fortunate position of being able to be pragmatic and develop an offering quickly to ensure we are always responding to client needs.”

Find out more at www.hutcheonmearns.co.uk