Ignite Alliance has brought a new way of doing business to the sector, believing that technology, marketing and finances can be daunting to small and medium-size business owners.
It has borrowed the outsource support model used in big business across Australia and adapted it to create a ‘one-stop-shop’ for small and medium-size enterprises’ back-end office functions.
These functions include consulting, finance, grants, technology and wealth as well as partner services in mortgage broking, insurance, legal, human resources, marketing and financial planning.
Ignite Alliance chief executive officer Wayne Banks said it made sense to offer small and medium-size business owners access to each skill set at one place.
Wayne said the model offered clients a level of convenience that saved them time and money.
“The best comparison would be between building a home yourself as an owner/builder or engaging a project home company. As an owner builder you need to source, engage and manage each part of the job with a project home company they do it all for you,” Wayne said.
“Our process and services allows the business owner or CEO to work on growing the business while we provide the entire support function for the back office. We call it less busyness, more business.”
A merger between Wayne Banks of Ignite Alliance and Lisa Kernes of Revolution Business saw the model emerge as they melded together their businesses then added the technology department and the partner services.
The idea was sparked by Wayne’s 30 years of experience in business advisory, accounting and technology, which included him being a chief finance officer for GHD in Newcastle and Lisa’s background in chartered accounting, operations and a virtual chief financial officer service in Sydney and Newcastle.
The end result is a service to support small to medium-sized enterprises by creating more of the two scarcest resources time and money.
“Ignite Alliance is about sparking a flame for your business, especially the passion, and to keep it burning with a group of service providers, all in one place. So you don’t have to do it all by yourself and it is convenient ” Wayne said.
“By leveraging technology, we have the ability to work anywhere and it doesn’t matter where the clients are based either, we don’t need to be geographically specific.”
IMAGE | Ignite Alliance chief executive officer Wayne Banks and chief operating officer Lisa Kernes