How FINTRX uses Mosaic to create a new standard of excellence
“Right before New Year’s, my CEO slacked me and said ‘Merry Christmas, I got you Mosaic.’ It was a great present, let me tell you.”
Guillaume Bose
Head of Operations, FINTRX
About FINTRX
FINTRX is a vertically integrated software and data platform that enables wealth professionals, financial institutions, and asset management firms to seamlessly map, access and sell into the global family office, broker dealer, and registered investment advisor ecosystems. Trusted by thousands of users at leading firms, FINTRX leverages intelligent data to target the right firms for capital raising, build stronger relationships, and make data-informed decisions.
The Challenge
Stuck in slow motion
Like many startups, FINTRX initially relied on Google Sheets for financial reporting, analysis, and forecasting. However, as the company expanded, the need for faster, more accurate, and reliable insights from the CEO and the Board grew significantly. This led to the adoption of Mosaic.
Additionally, the annual budgeting process was becoming unmanageable. The entire 2024 budget was created using Google Sheets—an approach that, while effective, proved to be unsustainable, cumbersome, and inflexible.
As described by Guillaume, “We got to an end result, but it was a large lift that took an entire headcount weeks on end to do. It wasn’t dynamic or sustainable, and almost impossible to report against throughout the year.”
By the end of 2023, it was evident that a more efficient solution was necessary to support the company’s next phase of growth.
The CEO was highly invested in transitioning to an automated software solution, as fostering a data-driven culture was (and remains) a top priority for him. He was also well-acquainted with the challenges of managing these workflows in spreadsheets, having personally handled them before Guillaume joined the team.
The switch to Mosaic was solidified by a 'Merry Christmas' Slack message from the CEO to Guillaume. “Right before New Year’s, my CEO slacked me and said, ‘Merry Christmas, I got you Mosaic.’ It was a great present, let me tell you.”
The Solution
Building a foundation for scale
With the support of Mosaic’s world-class onboarding team, Guillaume and his team prioritized use cases based on their immediate needs and deferred less urgent requirements for later.
“We loved that the Mosaic onboarding team are experts in FP&A and in SaaS. They were really able to guide us in the right direction on best-practices for our business model. That’s a very unique differentiator that I can’t imagine that we’d get anywhere else in the market.”
Here’s how they went about the rollout of Mosaic.
Connecting Source Data
First, FINTRX set up integrations with their Sage Intacct accounting software, Gusto, and Hubspot to automate the flow of real-time data and establish Mosaic as the single source of truth for financial and operational data.
Reporting and Analysis
The initial focus was on reporting and analysis. Within just two weeks, FINTRX successfully implemented its highest-priority analytics use cases, providing the CEO with actionable insights crucial for making strategic business decisions.
“As we were onboarding we said ‘it would be really great to have some analysis and reporting just based on the data you’re already pulling in that I can send to my CEO in 2 weeks.’ And so we were able to prioritize that which was great.”
The team is using Mosaic to report on their most important financial and operational metrics, including:
- New business ARR, upsells, downsells, churn, and ending ARR
- ARR by customer segments
- Retention rates by market segments and customer types
- Cash flow, net burn, and runway
- Accounts receivable balances and collections by customer
- Custom cash-centric metrics like ARR:Cash Flow and Rule of 40 that utilize cash flow instead of EBITDA
Cash flow and cash generation are top priorities for the CEO, and the team proudly runs a cashflow positive business.
To enhance their cash-centric approach, they leverage Mosaic’s custom Metric Builder to adapt traditional financial and SaaS metrics. For instance, they’ve created a custom metric that compares ARR to Cash Flow, which they monitor daily. Additionally, they’ve modified the Rule of 40 metric by replacing the revenue growth rate with ARR growth rate and substituting the operating margin with free cash flow.
Lastly, FINTRX uses Mosaic for budget versus actual variance reporting on key metrics such as revenue, OpEx, headcount, cash flow, billings, and collections.
“The reporting is so seamless that I can just toggle a filter or a view in Mosaic for our model from November and instantly show the delta.”
Budgeting and Forecasting
Guillaume initially created the 2024 budget in Google Sheets. However, once the group was onboarded with Mosaic, they uploaded the budget into Mosaic with a one-time upload. This enabled real-time variance reporting, allowing them to compare actual performance results against budget projections from the start of the year. Looking ahead, Guillaume is excited to build the 2025 budget entirely within Mosaic.
“I already know the lift is going to be that much easier next year. If we have a tip-top shape model for 2025 in Mosaic, that is going be like the biggest win. We’re definitely building towards a big working model that’s very active and collaborative for next year.”
Headcount Planning
Headcount planning is vital for FINTRX, as payroll costs are their largest and most dynamic expense. The company is continuously hiring new employees, transitioning staff into new roles, and accounting for departures.
Mosaic’s Headcount Planner has become an indispensable tool, enabling Guillaume to swiftly model frequent changes in employee roles, strategize new hires, and understand the financial impact on EBITDA and cash flow.
“Headcount planning is very dynamic in a company like ours. There’s people coming in. There’s people going out. We’re investing in new strategic initiatives, opening new offices, creating new teams, things move so fast… that has to be probably the most helpful lift for us so far.”
Board Reporting
The FINTRX team regularly reports performance results to the CEO, who then shares them with the Board. The company’s culture is intensely metric-driven, exemplified by the CEO’s office, where a large-screen TV continuously displays live metrics from all aspects of the business.
Mosaic’s automated analytics and dashboards have quickly become the primary tools for the CEO to manage the business and report performance results and forward-looking forecasts to the Board. The impact has been transformative.
“Our CEO has nothing but great things to say about Mosaic. We actually just ran our most recent board meeting straight from a Mosaic dashboard. Our execs and investors were working through that Mosaic dashboard live in the last board meeting. So he is still riding high from using Mosaic.”
The Impact
Crystal-clear visibility is priceless
Guillaume happily reports that Mosaic is saving him and his team at least 10 hours per week surfacing reliable performance metrics to the CEO and other leaders. “I’d be online working all night if I didn’t have Mosaic.”
Another significant achievement has been the ability to uncover previously inaccessible metrics and use them for actionable decision-making. These deeper insights, which were once difficult or impossible to obtain, have empowered FINTRX to undertake strategic initiatives in areas such as sales, headcount planning, and cost allocation.
“We now use all these metrics we’ve uncovered to drive business strategy. If we didn't know about those metrics before, or didn't know we were slipping on them, or couldn’t measure ourselves against the industry, that could really cost us. That kind of ROI is priceless, almost unquantifiable.”
Finally, the team is now running their board meetings from Mosaic. What used to take Guillaume a week to prepare for the board meeting now takes only an afternoon. And the Board couldn’t be more impressed.
“Our last board meeting was run on Mosaic, and the Board was blown away. The metrics come alive in Mosaic and really tell their own story. The meeting went seamlessly. It’s without doubt the best way to conduct a board meeting.”
What’s next
Guillaume and the FINTRX team have ambitious plans to further integrate Mosaic into their daily operations and expand its use across the business. They are eager to develop a comprehensive 2025 annual plan within the platform, complete with detailed topline revenue plans informed by pipeline data from HubSpot.
Their goal is to transition from anecdotal department updates to data-driven meetings, thereby enhancing strategic decision-making across the company.
As the company anticipates future funding rounds, Guillaume is enthusiastic about the ease with which they can prepare financials and other due diligence materials for future investors.
“As we continue to attract more investors, we’ll have all that financial information at our fingertips. It’s going to be an unbelievable efficiency gain so that we can continue to conduct everyday business operations while also fundraising for the company.”
Cheers to their continued success!
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