VIVIAN E. NATHAN
Roberts Nathan
Established in 1997, Roberts Nathan has offices in Dublin and Cork and a team of over 50 professionals. Vivian E. Nathan specialises in providing business advisory services to progressive companies expanding their businesses into Ireland.
ACTIVITY From a strictly trading perspective, the pandemic has been neutral. That was apart from the regular services, which continued to be provided, with considerable work being done to assist our clients and ensure that they availed of the maximum supports open to them. Prior to the pandemic we made a significant investment in moving the practice infrastructure to the cloud. This has allowed us to continue to deliver our audit and consulting services as and when they are required by our clients.
REMOTE WORKING Initially, remote working was a big leap and needed significant readjustment to the business model. It has worked out reasonably well over the year but one of the big shortcomings is that more mundane and everyday tasks take longer to get done.
Continued communication and day-to-day interaction with staff and partners is also more challenging. The onboarding of new staff when necessary has been much more difficult given the remote nature of things at present. However, our approach is very proactive and we ensure that our staff, as well as our clients, are being looked after.
BUSINESS SUPPORTS By and large, government supports have been good. However, the Covid Restrictions Support Scheme is too restrictive and only benefits a small number of entities. Once the supports are withdrawn it will be interesting to see if there is a pent-up demand released. If not, you could well see a jump in insolvency cases. It is hard to see how businesses in the worst-affected lockdown sectors such as hospitality, travel, retail and personal services could stagger on past June 2021. The cost base is very low but finances are in a very fragile state and are close to a tipping point.
ENTERPRISE We are seeing people innovate and reinvent themselves, and as we are a very agile and proactive firm, we are well placed to support them. We are also seeing a new channel, with post-Brexit companies looking to Ireland as an alternative at present.