Metapraxis

Metapraxis provides financial analysis and planning, founded in 1979 by Robert Bittlestone, with a published scale-up plan aimed at chief executives whose business has outgrown its existing financial reporting.

Framing the product around the moment a business outgrows its approach rather than around features is unusually precise about when this kind of software is actually bought.

Companies do not adopt financial planning software because they want better analysis. They adopt it at a specific breaking point, and the symptoms are recognisable: the monthly reporting pack takes two weeks to produce and is therefore always describing history, nobody can answer a question that was not anticipated when the spreadsheet was built, and different parts of the business quote different numbers for the same measure in the same meeting.

That last symptom is the one that forces action, because it destroys the board's confidence in the finance function rather than merely inconveniencing it.

A firm operating since 1979 is worth noting in a category where most vendors are venture-funded and less than a decade old. That longevity indicates a business built on consulting relationships rather than on rapid growth, and buyers should understand which model they are buying into: the analytical depth is likely to be greater and the product likely to be less self-service.

Financial analysis rather than planning as the emphasis suggests the focus is on understanding what happened and why, which is the harder discipline. Producing a forecast is straightforward; explaining why last quarter differed from the forecast, in terms a board can act on, is where finance functions earn their standing.

Pricing is published with figures of GBP 5 and GBP 20 relating to the scale-up plan positioning.