Covid affected many businesses in many different ways. Some – those in hospitality and retail, for example – were hit hard and fast.

Others, however, felt a much more delayed impact.

When the pandemic struck, telecoms was named as an essential industry and could continue ‘as normal’, and in the first six months of Covid, turnover and revenue remained steady.  

However, being named as an essential industry had some significant downside, as an established WA-based specialist telecommunications, infrastructure, construction, and maintenance provider discovered.

“The Covid impact on the business was insidious and significant. By insidious, I mean that we were low down on the food chain – the big companies, the likes of Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, TPG and so on, had their own workforce difficulties, and consequently – eventually – the flow down of work to businesses like us slowed right down.”

However, because telecommunications was an essential industry, and the business hadn’t suffered an immediate downturn, it couldn’t access government support. By the time the knock-on effect had fully flowed through the company, government support had stopped – leaving it with some cash flow challenges.

“A good friend of mine who’s a senior executive in another finance group recommended Bizcap to me,” explains the director.

“I have to say, the experience was extraordinary in comparison to how I have known financial institutions behave for over 40 years.

“Bizcap has developed a methodology, product and a means of understanding its customer, and tailor-made the product that it’s putting into the market.

“There’s no one size fits all in terms of their customer assessment – they assist customers individually.

“All finance businesses say ‘we assess you individually’, but they use common practices, standard rules and age-old risk assessment methods, whereas Bizcap’s risk assessment methods – while not revolutionary – are very streamlined and intellectually robust.”

Understanding the Bizcap product

Between May 2021 and November 2021, the business took out four loans with Bizcap totalling more than $800,000, and the director says, “It’s been very useful for us over the past 12 months.”

He stresses that it’s vital that any business understands the type of loan product it is when applying.

“You don’t take on this product without understanding it yourself and understanding how your business can manage it. It needs a disciplined approach, and it needs to be respected for what it is. It’s not a bank loan with a 30-year repayment history.”

The funds from Bizcap have helped the business smooth out the cashflow troughs they were experiencing as a delayed impact of Covid, and now the business is in a solid position to plan for the future – whatever that may hold.

“The future is uncertain thanks to the state of the world and the state of the nation, and you never know what governments are going to do,” the director says.

“We’re steady-as-she-goes in terms of our core business, but we’re looking at other businesses to diversify the revenue streams, and we will be looking at opportunities with Bizcap to plug holes as things happen along the way.

“In my humble opinion, that’s the best use of the Bizcap facilities – you plug a hole that is there. It’s a short, seamless plug-a-gap product, and it’s been very useful for us over the last 12 months.”

And, we hope, we can be even more useful to businesses such as this in the years to come, too