Success by numbers

I was fortunate to be part of a group that attended a presentation by Matthew Michalewicz recently in Sydney.

Matthew might not be a household name in Australia … yet. A dynamic and engaging speaker, he was born in Poland in the mid-1970s, immigrated to New Zealand as a small child, then to America as a teenager.  In 2003 he moved with his family to Adelaide.

An only child of academic parents, he developed entrepreneurial skills under the tutelage of various mentors from his mid-teens and has a passion for understanding success. He started his first business as a teenager, his second and third in his 20s in America and his latest, SolveIT, in 2005 after he moved to Adelaide.

He has successfully exited all businesses after building them to employers of up to 180 staff and $20million turnover. His ability to mix venture capital, high-profile board members (Nobel Peace Prize winners, presidents and the CEO of America’s largest bank) and clever sales strategies is evident in all his ventures.

One of the key messages from the presentation, and no doubt in his upcoming book Life in Half a Second – How to Achieve Success Before it’s too Late is the persuasive power of numbers.

Matthew’s latest business SolveIT, which he sold in 2012, delivers optimisation software for supply chains in large businesses.  His ability to articulate the benefits of SolveIT’s offerings and justify it using defendable numbers is impressive.  He was able to speak to BHP about reducing their supply chain cost by an amount so large that it would have been impossible for them to say no!

Using numbers to justify business decisions isn’t new, but it’s something that I don’t think is used enough, particularly by payroll professionals.

The reason we produce an annual payroll benchmarking survey is to assist businesses identify and leverage the value that exists in the payroll operation.  We have recently worked with an organisation to reduce their annual cost of payroll delivery by 55% without a reduction in staffing costs.

I had the pleasure of getting an email last week from a client of ours who is a member and currently studying the Certificate IV in Payroll Administration.

In part she writes, “based on your payroll benchmarking report I requested a pay rise and got the remarkable result of a 12.5% increase from July 1, 2013 … also from your report I have made numerous suggestions to my employer regarding cost cutting while improving efficiency. This has really changed the way people look at my work and I’m so pleased to be recognised in the organisation.”

Matthew’s upcoming book is based on a fact-based formula for achieving success in life and business.

I’ll be one of the first to purchase it in October when it is released.

If you have any questions about how the new government might affect your employment and payroll arrangements, please email me at tracy@austpayroll.com.au.