2025 JANUARY UPDATE: This website is currently a placeholder talking about past activities which are still of great interest to the founder Dr Sue Saunders. What happened? Since January 2018, Sue as managing director together with her business partner operated A4 Funds Pty Ltd that provided administration and accounting services for many different types of wholesale funds, including crypto funds, traditional share trading funds, property trusts and private equity funds. During that time the company was known for its ability to innovate new and highly flexible software to meet the needs of ambitious managers.
At end June 2024, A4 Funds Pty Ltd was sold to Non Correlated Group. Bardak Ventures with full rights to the software developed during the previous five and half years, is continuing to provide operational support to fund managers and their trustees, plus administration and accounting together with Unit Register, online applications, crypto and conventional trades processing and white labelled software to support in-house use. The idea is for funds to inexpensively upgrade from spreadsheet to a service that integrates with existing state-of-the-art software in conjunction with the well-known Xero based system.
For further details, please refer to the Bardak website. In the meantime, this site explains Sue’s passion for helping companies prosper with good management systems and enabling supporting software. These principles are being applied daily in Bardak’s current service package for emerging fund managers.
Business in Control is a trading arm of Bardak Ventures Pty Ltd. It is a (currently dormant) boutique management consultancy that helps small to medium sized businesses thrive financially by operating efficiently and providing a fulfilling experience for both customers, employees and owners.
If you are a business owner, non-executive director or responsible for financial information in your organisation, I am able to help you interpret what is really happening in your business using tried and true investigative procedures and analysis of current data.
My method of operation is to begin by providing a monthly business mentoring service. Sometimes just meeting once per month to go over what is happening in your business, to discuss strategy and to review performance, is the best and most positive step towards improving performance. The attention to information needs usually arises as the mentoring process progresses. Mentoring does not have to be a strain on the budget and it is amazing how being able to have an outside view of your business’s dynamics is so helpful in formulating policy and actions that can incrementally move you business forward.
There are two prime reasons that small business owners are constrained in formulating strategy and making informed business decisions.
- TIME – There is never enough time to sit back and review the status of your business.
- DATA – Information flows and data collection may not be up-to-date or worse still, not being collected accurately.
The monthly review process with an external consultant provides a regular time for stepping back from the day-to-day to consider progress and where the business is headed. Being able to measure past performance accurately is the first step in being able to forecast ahead, try out different strategies and set action plans for the future.
My approach involves taking an overview of the whole business or organisation to identify areas that need improving. Very often I find that software integration and add-on systems can improve information flow leaving more time for people to be doing the things that grow the business. For example, assessing the efffectiveness of point of sale, production control or the accounting system. Are these systems talking to each other? Is the original data input only happening once? Do your systems produce relevant summary information to help in decision making? Is there some performance analysis? Does the information assist you in planning ahead?
I work with well known software systems such as Xero, MYOB, Vend, Lightspeed, Retail Express, Quickbooks and others. I develop bespoke software integration systems using the Claris FileMaker platform. Often a simple software application added onto your existing information system can make life so much easier. FileMaker systems are quick to develop and can can be enhanced in stages as and when development funds become available. Sometimes a simple Excel application can be used to good effect as well. I am also well familiar with web site software such as WordPress, Joomla! and similar that can be integrated with common in-house business processes.
Businesses that already have a well designed and functional accounting system may be interested in my proprietary financial modelling software known as the Business in Control Model or the BIC Model for short. This system is designed to allow businesses to build and maintain a rolling forecast with regular analysis of performance. In most cases the BIC Model engine is customised to meet specific needs of each organisation where it is applied.