Crunch are a Brighton-based company who are in the business of making people’s lives easier. They support freelancers, contractors and small businesses by giving them the tools they need to get the most out of their ventures.
Florentin Raud, Support and I.T Manager at Crunch, explains how their customers and larger network can benefit by using Crunch.

We offer simple online accounting software, business insurance, self-employed mortgages, and financial planning. Members of our free Crunch Chorus community can also access a wealth of handy resources such as templates, calculators, networking events, and downloadable guides.

An accountancy firm by trade, Crunch specialise in making progressive, user friendly software that makes it easy to manage accounting online. Customers can also speak to Crunch’s expert accountants, as well as their own personal client managers. With the bulk of their business being online, Florentin explained why reliable connectivity is so important to them.

We’re a cloud-based service, so our clients can access our service anytime, anywhere, and keep on top of their finances. We give them a real-time view of how their business is performing and how much tax they’ll owe. Unlike HMRC, who we have to deal with daily, most people don’t send faxes anymore, so any amount of internet downtime would be a problem for us. Fast, reliable, and cost effective access to the internet is absolutely vital for our business.

As a digital business we use the internet for just about everything we do; whether that’s Google Drive for creating and collaborating on content, Salesforce for managing our sales pipeline and client servicing, live chat on our website, email, Wi-Fi around the office, we rely on Fastnet to provide a great service and fortunately they do!

Thousands of start-ups, talented individuals and successful businesses have gone through Crunch. We asked Florentin what they think someone starting an online business would need to consider before putting their entrepreneurial dream into action.

The internet allows people to share their skills and knowledge beyond the geographical reach they once had. We fully embrace that model at Crunch. You don’t need a physical store to do business anymore, things have moved on. Even if you do have one, just “being there” is no longer sufficient anyway. You need to create meaningful content, provide value before the paywall, and create trust up front.

You still need a social media presence, even if you don’t think you do. You need to be where your audience is, and be part of the conversation, creating engagement with potential and existing clients. For us it’s as much about navigating serious and complex regulation change as it is about offering a human touch.

We love being associated with businesses like Crunch, who offer a valuable service to thousands of people who really need it. We also really admire their Crunch Chorus incentive, which gives their brand more depth whilst providing a free online resource for anyone to use. We asked Florentin to comment on Crunch’s experience using Fastnet. He was kind enough to say the following.

We like our ISP to have the technology and real humans available when we need them. That’s why we‘ve been using Fastnet as our main internet service provider for many years.

Fastnet are an official Government Voucher Scheme supplier, entitling SME’s to up to £3k of funding towards a superfast internet connection.
To find out if your business can benefit from Fastnet’s products and services, please call now on 01273 688088 contact us here.