Whether your business’s growth is outpacing your team, you desire more comprehensive financial reporting or you need a stronger financial plan to grow the topline and people capacity, outsourcing CFO services could help your bottom line and transform your business. It could also help to save your business if you sense that it may be in trouble. Growth gobbles up cash, many companies do not project these cash flow needs early enough while in fast-growth mode!
It’s a bold statement. However, what if you only need a part-time strategic CFO partner to help you overcome your business’s obstacles to growth and give you the clarity to make the right business decisions? Best of all, you will have all the benefits and expertise of a seasoned CFO or a CFO team without having the significant financial commitment of a full-time employee.
What Are the Advantages of Outsourcing CFO Services?
Many Companies have an internal accounting team as well as outsourcing certain components of their financial planning and accounting functions. There are others that have chosen to outsource due to the costs and difficulties of finding and bringing on key talent.
Impact through Clarity and Confidence
The primary benefit of the right CFO is that CEOs and their team gain clarity about what matters and confidence in making the right decisions. Growth CFO (versus traditional CFOs) are actually profit centers. They do three things – increase revenue and profit, accelerate cash, and help CEOs succeed successfully to get paid twice.
Considerably Less Expensive
Since you won’t have a full-time CFO on your payroll, you won’t be paying benefits, bonuses, payroll taxes, and the associated HR costs of hiring and onboarding. You will not experience any misses in your financial outcomes due to vacations or time off. This approach also helps minimize expenses since you can scale up or down as needed.
Minimize Your Risk
Engaging outsourced CFO services or fraction CFO services can help you identify, assess, and manage your risk. For example, do you know the intricacies of your company’s debt risk, the impact of tax non-compliance, or how to use financial projections to calculate risks effectively? A seasoned fractional CFO team can help you oversee financial controls, measure risk, better predict risk, cash flow, and ensure compliance.
Proactive Financial Management & Strategic Planning
An outsourced CFO will help you see the big financial picture and give you a firm grasp on your company’s current state with real-time reporting and where it is headed. They can create roadmaps with key performance indicators to help you achieve your performance and growth objectives. This key advantage can turn your financials into actionable next steps so you can make decisions more quickly and effectively.
When Is the Right Time to Consider Outsourcing CFO Services?
While many CEOs consider an outsourced CFO when they struggle financially, it does not have to be that way. Perhaps you don’t need a full-time employee to fulfill the role (in fact our Growth CFO 3-person teams beat full-time CFO because we are not limited to the comfort zone of one), or you simply cannot find the talent. CEOs also consider outsourcing CFO services when they want an objective point-of-view and an insightful partner who can collaborate with their executive team. It also may be a suitable time when you’re growing quickly, and your existing team needs additional support or a deeper skillset. One thing to consider when outsourcing CFO services, do you want just one person or a small team, those with more combined experience.
What Can an Outsourced CFO Do for You?
A better question to ask is, what are your obstacles to growth? From there, you can identify key responsibilities created around your specific needs and pain points. For many of our clients, top financial challenges include:
- Winning new customers
- Having the right team in place and delivery capacity
- Proactively gaining access to capital
- Keeping and growing your existing customers
- Addressing low financial performance including the impact of inflation
The earlier you bring in a seasoned expert 3-person team, the sooner you can get on a better path that achieves your financial goals to breathe easy.
Why You Need a Financial Flight Plan
Whether you are growing at lightning speed, are struggling, or are getting ready to scale up, simply looking at last year’s data to formulate your plan forward, it’s not enough. Look for an outsourced CFO partner who can do more than produce cash flow statements, pay the bills, and perform an audit (because that’s Controller/Accounting work). You need to understand the data, get real-time reports, and convert the financials into action. We refer to the last part as a “financial flight plan.” It will allow you to make better decisions and shift your mindset from “decision by assumption” to “managing by the data.” That can translate to increasing the valuation of your company, increasing household income, learning better ways to increase your profit, and avoiding those obstacles to growth.
How Foresight CFO Is Different from Other Outsourced CFO Services
Our experienced Growth CFO team at Foresight CFO has worked collaboratively with hundreds of CEOs worldwide to bring meaningful financial insight that clarifies their strategic direction. Schedule a 25-minute discovery call with me, and we will discuss you & your business, what you want, and what is getting in the way.