Interview with James Webb of Pulse

Pulse is a FREE tool to get analytics on your accounts. It shows changes in fortunes on 4 crucial areas of your business. James Webb is promoting this service and has great success in signing up Accountants that use this to help their clients.
Find out how and why they do this for free in the Podcast.

Pulse has a parent company, Nucleus Commercial Finance, a lender.

To get in contact with James his email is
james.webb@nucleus-cf.co.uk

Business Advisor Martin Reynolds interviews the great and the good of business

Thanks for listening follow me on Linkedin

Transcript

So welcome back. We're back again at grider in Braintree, and today I'm joined with James Webb, whose partnerships manager for a product called Pulse, which has a parent company called Nucleus Commercial. Tell us a bit, first of all, what Pulse is so that, everybody gets to understand what it is that you guys do for a.

Perfect. Thanks Martin. And  thanks for joining everybody. So Pulse is,  , a free data insight tool, , aimed at supporting SMEs in this tough environmental economic world that we are in at the moment. , and, and lots of research and businesses that we deal with, tell us that. , businesses want insights into trends.

They want help with data. They want to be supported in this tough environment that we are in. So we launched, pulse back in Q4 of 2022. It's seen fantastic significant growth over the last few months and some very exciting plans ahead, which sure we'll talk about later. Brilliant. So tell us a little bit about how Pulse came about and,  maybe a little bit about your owners' sort of entrepreneurial journey as this is about how people arrived and where they.

Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, pulse is part of a company, as you mentioned, called Nucleus Commercial that was formed in 2011. Um, that's a lender. Um, and to date we've lent just under 3 billion pounds to SMEs across the UK for a range of things from growth, support, et cetera. From there, um, we've won over 20 awards.

We've got around 140 staff, and we'll continue to grow and, and continue to offer. So SMEs across the UK market, uh, what we've found over the last few years, as I mentioned earlier, is that, um, a lot of businesses that we deal with as, as we said earlier, need some help. Um, and Shehar, who's our founder, um, very good background in terms of, uh, asset ba, asset based manager, um, uh, master's degree in finance technology.

Um, and his view is, Um, we can help businesses with technology, we can help them, uh, with, with insights and knowledge and, and effectively, I guess that's why Pulse has brought to market, um, as you said earlier, to, to help these people. So how does the technology help? Yeah. So, um, in order for poster work, we'll plug into the company's open accounting package, which gives us a great insight into lots of different things.

And on the seventh of each month, the company receives a free report, which is basically the information that we pull from their accounting package, say zero, et cetera. Uh, we'll send them graphs on four particular areas, which are turnover debt com ratios, gross margin and profitability, as well as a full set of their accounts.

Um, now the graphs at this that we send will show trends over 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24 months, right in the assumption that they will. Uh, help the reader or the accountant understand trends of how those businesses are operating or companies are operating. Um, but to then, I guess go away and look at that in a bit more detail to understand why those things are happening, which effectively can use experts like yourself to, to support or help grow these businesses.

The reports, a bit of any use needs the. And this is a question, not a statement. Yeah. The, the clients who have actually got their accounts up to date by the seventh of each month, um, how realistic is that? Bearing in mind a lot of the guys don't do it for two or three months. Yeah, so the, it, it's a good question.

Um, dependent upon the size of business, obviously, that, that uses Pulse, that the larger companies we deal with tend to do it possibly daily or weekly. Um, and they will have an up-to-date package by the seventh. Obviously, we've put it back. Uh, to the seventh in order for month end stuff to be captured by the accountant or for the business.

Now for a smaller company, if you don't update your accounts, um, quarterly or you don't update them monthly, um, it's perfectly fine. You'll still receive a pulse report, but of course it will only be updated once your accounting package. Um, is updated, and that's just as helpful, if not more insightful because you're still capturing the trends of data over that time.

And what sort of, um, details do you put in those reports? Is it just merely the, the numbers or do you put any interpretation on them? Yeah, so the numbers are there and the percentage of growth or the incline and decline and effect are in there. Um, and then underneath there on your pulse support are some guides about, so what does that mean or how to, um, and then through our partnership channel, we can obviously introduce experts into those areas where needed.

Yes. I can see it being very useful in ours because we have a, an app that we use with our clients, which shows what activity they're doing, and the pulse would be, What's the result of those activities and whether we should need to be fine tuning those. So that's very good. How do you see the markets going at the moment, um, and is there an appetite for the, the, this sort of type of information with accountants and professionals?

Yeah, so to start off with, I cover the growth of it so far. So like I said, pulse has launched in Q4 2022. To date, we've got around 1,150 businesses registered. We've sent out about 4,000 reports. Um, so early indications are, there's a big need for this. Um, and the data is really helpful. They range from smaller companies up to a large five, 6 million pound turnover businesses.

So we know there's a range of companies that want to. Um, as know the last few years have been significantly tough. Yeah, definitely businesses and people and, and so therefore these insights will hopefully give people a bit more. Knowledge or insight, as we said earlier in, in terms of why some of their trends have happening.

I guess what we hope over the next few months is things can stabilize, things can ease off, which might give people a bit more time to try and consider options or to look at things in order to help to move on. But of course people still heavily impacted by interest rates, cost of inflation, et cetera.

From there, zoom, um, raises a question there then in terms of, do you. Provide any sort of macroeconomic reports coming outta this. So this is all on it, obviously individual companies, but do you actually do an aggregate amount to see what the trend is over businesses as a whole? Yeah, so once we've, um, got a, a large number of businesses on, uh, the portal, which we should have within the next few months, um, as I mentioned earlier, some kind of next phases that we are looking to do, and one of those will be.

Benchmarking will be around certain specific areas or categories around industries or different areas that we can provide some insight on. Brilliant. And, uh, what are your growth projections and plans for the future? Yeah, so for half two of this year, we are looking to add around a thousand businesses a month.

Um, predominantly these will come from either, um, you know, events that we are at, things like this, which are great. So thank you again for inviting me on to here. My pleasure. Um, uh, accountants that we talk to will obviously have bulks of clients that they would want to upload. So lots of different areas, uh, in order for us to explore.

Excellent. Excellent. Um, so it sounds like a very powerful tool and a lot of insight that you're gonna get from it. Um, so how much does it cost? Well, the good news is it's free, free for businesses, free for accountants, free for anybody that uses it. So, where do you make your money? So, uh, short term, uh, we have no plans to monetize or put any costs into Pulse.

Um, and, and the key reason for that, as I mentioned earlier, re what we want Pulse to be is an insight support tool for SMEs across the country. Um, one of our future plans, which we said earlier, is once we start to understand trends of data from businesses, of course what we do know is from our lending side of the army, should a company need lending, of course we'll have some relevant data, which will be really helpful for us to use, but also, To support the businesses from a lending perspective.

So from our side as a business, uh, once the lending channel, which is likely to be, let's say quarter four, uh, maybe stepping into early next year gets up and running for us commercially, that can be where, uh, we'll make money for it. But as I said earlier, the, the important bit for PS is the insights and data that we can get.

Yes. And I suppose though, um, that if you, if you've got enough information about the client, you can see whether they'll be able to support your, um, quite justified lending, uh, criteria, so, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, and equally for us, you know, we, we'd of course love our, our clients to come to us for lending.

Um, however, if the client chooses to go to another provider, we still know that we can help them because we've provided the, the data that we know everybody will want to. Perfect. Well, thanks James. Um, but not wanting to sound a bit like an advert, but uh, who does Pulse benefit? Good question. Um, pulse really can benefit any s e A across the uk.

Um, however, I guess there are some, um, stipulations within that for, for everybody to have. So, um, the company needs to have an accounting package, zero sage, et cetera, uh, which I think the majority of of businesses nowadays have. Um, secondly is, um, if the business is under two years old, yeah, they'll only receive a, a partial.

Pulse report. And part of that is because we don't have the trends of data built up so far. Once the company hits two years old, um, then they will start to receive their full pulse report. So from that point of view, anybody really, uh, providing user digital accountancy platform can benefit from pulse.

Perfect. Well, let's peel some layers back as well about you really, James, because, um, this basically is your baby, your, uh, you are the partnership manager, but you, you are setting the whole thing up. So what was your. Um, background before coming to join Pulse? Yeah, so I've worked in the finance or banking profession for the last 15, 20 years.

Right. And, and all of the roles I've had have been dealing with people, whether that's as a branch manager or a consultant or a premier manager, whatever it is. And I've always enjoyed working with people. Um, and when the opportunity for Pulse was presented to. There's a few things that really excited me.

One is it, it's such a diverse world that's out there and dealing with lots of different businesses. Yes, it's a very tough world, but it, it's really exciting, I think, to, to learn more about things that are impacting people out there. I'm quite an inquisitive person, so I want to try and learn a little bit more about those sorts of things.

So that was really exciting to me. A a and secondly is because this is quite unique or different in the market, I did feel this was a really great opportunity to kind of take something and, and see the growth for it. Um, we're delighted with the growth so far and, and equally, um, over the next probably 12 to 18 months, we'll be looking to expand the team, bring more people on board, explore new areas, yeah.

Et cetera from there. So from a professional point of view, um, that was what really excited me about it. Um, and they're a great, great company to work for. I'm really, really happy, uh, where I am, uh, outside of work. Um, I'd say keep fit. That's a lie. Try to keep fit. Uh, play a bit of golf, but not as good as you.

Oh, you haven't seen me play one, one for the diary. Yeah. Uh, to get that one sorted. Um, so yeah, just, just generally busy person. Um, enjoying join life at the minute, sort of what sort of inspired you, what did you, I wish we go. To when Little Little James is at school and things. What, what was the sort of things that motivated you there?

Did you have a particular teacher that was a, a mentor or did you have like, one of my, uh, other interviewees had somebody that, uh, upset him, so he said, I'm gonna beat him. Well, years ago, uh, I, I said to my dad, he was, um, a, an engineer or electrician by trade, and I said, what do you. And he said, it doesn't matter.

You're not gonna do it. So that ruled that industry out. Um, I've always had a passion for sport and, and from, um, a fairly young age, I've been involved in sporting clubs, had some, um, uh, chairman of our local football club. Oh, right. And uh, and I started off coaching from, uh, uh, a quite a young age actually, in terms of different sports and clubs, et cetera.

So that kind of element I think of always working with people was. I guess naturally always been within me to try and help people grow or develop. Uh, I fell into banking purely by a mistake. I walked along a high street, saw an advert in a window, thought I'll have a go, and, and that was it. Uh, and, and ever since then, I guess that I've always wanted that element of just working with people and helping people.

And, and obviously not gonna be an electrician or engineer by trade. Are you competitive then because of your sporting background? Yes, very. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No short answer. So you wanna make this work? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Really excited by it. It is a challenge, you know, let, let's be honest in terms of everything that's out there, but, uh, yeah, absolutely.

A hundred percent c committed to getting this. So what sort of, um, stage are some of your clients online? I know it's early days, you've only been going six months. Um, you know, are there ones that are joining Pulse because they're doing well? Are there also ones joining because they're doing very badly and they wanna find a way out?

Yeah, there's, there, there's a real range actually. Um, one of our clients is, um, uh, is like, um, a business mentor. Um, we've got business coaches, we've got accountants, we've got small one-handed businesses. Mm-hmm. Um, we've got a large company, uh, up in Scotland. Um, and, and they range. And I guess why do they join?

Is is the question. Um, some of it, as you say, is because they're in difficulty and need some insight or help into that. Some of it is because they're doing really well and I wonder understand why they're growing so quickly or things that are happening. But there's lots of things and we, we've got one company that basically doesn't have an FD in place, wants to get regular figures as opposed to when they go to see their accountants, a pulse works really well for them cuz it's automated.

Um, you know, there are others that just don't have the technology or equipment to keep track of these things from there. Yeah. So it's a real, a real range of businesses that use. Have you got any competition being competitive? Yes. Yes, there are. Um, there are competition or competitive companies that are out there.

Um, some of those are, are very well established, have great connections. Some of those you pay for. Um, some of those are a bit more advanced than ours in terms of you can filter stuff and change dates and presets, et cetera from there. And, and I think there's pros and cons to either, um, for us, I guess at the minute, the product is quite simple, but the feedback is good about that.

It's not too overly complicated to use. Yes, there are competitors out there that offer what we do, which I think highlights the importance of companies wanting this kind of data and insight. Are you gonna be developing it to, to make it a little bit more complicated or, or is your state of name to keep it simple?

Uh, as a product? Yeah. So there's, as I said earlier, there, there are plans, um, that the pre-approved lending part, as you mentioned earlier, will come later on down the line. Um, the date filters, et cetera, will come uh, within the next few weeks. We are also introducing like a portal dashboard. So if, for example, if you're an accountant and you've got, I dunno, 500 clients on there, you can log on and see all of your clients' reports Yeah.

And sort those and, and, and data from there. Um, and then through time, once we've um, kind of developed the product a little bit more, um, we can add different areas as opposed to the four reports that we've got as well. Okay. Sounds very good. Great. So thanks Martin. So obviously we've spent a fair bit of time exploring Pulse and the benefits just.

I'd be really interested. Obviously we've been chatting about Pulse for a few months now, but from your point of view, um, what's your view on it or how could it help your clients? Or from your point of view, what benefits could this bring and, and help for you and your clients? Well, it is getting the insights into their accounting and making sure they're disciplined.

Because we are business coaches, or as we call ourselves, business improvement specialists, don't like the word coach. And it's getting people to understand that their accounts are theirs and it's for them to drive their business and it's not something to do for compliance is a a major thing. So if we can have a report, which is showing fairly simple, but top line figures, you know, like growth trends and all the rest of it, that would also match into what we do.

As I said earlier, we've got an app that when we're coaching clients, Improving them. They, um, uh, can see everything that we are doing. So any, anything that they've agreed to do, the app will drive their behavior. Mm-hmm. Um, but at the end of it, you wanna see something from that? Yep. Because they're not necessarily going to be using a CRM system or our CRM system that can't dovetail end to the reporting that we've got.

So the reporting, being able to link in your reporting directly into that, would give them that financial benefit. And then we can look at. The stuff that they have produced, which is the data that they need to do for us. Like how many, you know, tweets are they doing, how many customers they're going to see, uh, what product range are they going after?

Um, what's their margin? All that will translate into. The actual four areas of business that are important so we can dovetail your report into ours and really get them a good insight into their business and how they're performing. So I think it's vital from our point of view to push that ahead. Yeah.

And um, I can only see that benefiting and if we can. Dovetail into some of our thinking into yours as well. It would only make the product better, I feel. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Well, look, James, thanks very much for the time today. Um, it's been great as usual. The rooms here are, have been very useful for these, uh, little sessions.

Very much so. Yeah. Very impressed. Not overheard by, uh, anybody else. Thank God. Apart from hundred of people on the podcast. Yep. And I'll. Leave it there. Just thank you once more for your time and um, I'll just need to get on with a bit of editing there. Thanks very much. Good luck. If you'd like to learn more about how Pulse can help your business, I'll give the contact details to James and to his website in the show notes below.

Look forward to seeing you at our next podcast. Thank you.