SG Personnel makes Significant Savings with Help of Siemens Financial Services

Sunderland-based recruitment firm SG Personnel is making significant savings after moving its invoice discounting service to Siemens Financial Services (SFS).

SG Personnel supplies temporary and permanent industrial workers to manufacturing and engineering companies. The company has been trading for three years and from inception had used a factoring service from a high street bank. This included back office support such as management of payroll and credit control.

As the business grew, this arrangement was not proving to be cost-effective.  Additionally, after trading for two and a half years the company wanted to regain control of its payroll processes.  Experience meant the business was able to manage these without external support.

“Having reached a £3million turnover, the business had achieved a level of maturity where I could take some time to review the service”, explains Simon Pickering, Managing Director, SG Personnel.

“I was keen to take control of the back office processes and find a more cost effective arrangement.”

SG Personnel was introduced to SFS by Julie Skevington, Managing Director of Sincero Business Solutions Ltd, which specialises in helping SMEs find the right funding solutions.

“It was decided that SG would hire an in-house accountant to administer payroll and credit control, but a new invoice discounting provider was needed,” Julie comments. “I had already met with SFS and seen a demonstration of the invoice discounting system and I was confident that it would be a great fit for SG Personnel. There was potential to save the company a significant amount of money.”

SG Personnel implemented an overhaul of systems and processes; new recruitment software was implemented, the in-house accountant was recruited and SG moved to SFS’s invoice discounting arrangement.

“SFS gave us fantastic support throughout the whole process”, says Simon. “The team were extremely reassuring throughout and their experience in the recruitment sector meant that they had a good understanding of the business.

“As a company serving the manufacturing sector, we are very familiar with the Siemens brand and the company’s credibility and reputation is definitely an added benefit.”

The system is intuitive and easy-to-use and Simon and his team find the real-time information and immediate drawdown is particularly valuable when dealing with temporary workers paid on a weekly basis.

Pulin Trivedi, Invoice Finance Head of Sales – North East, Siemens Financial Services adds, “As a well-established business we recognised the opportunity to offer SG Personnel a better rate than the previous provider. Unlike other providers we were able to tailor the offering to the client and the flexible system that we’ve implemented can grow with the company.”