Did You Know Planning A Business Exit Takes 7 Years? Where Are You At?

Did You Know Planning A Business Exit Takes 7 Years? Where Are You At?

Succession planning and/or exit planning is a very common topic we encounter as CFO’s when addressing a client’s top list of priorities.

In fact, a current client of mine has listed this as their number one priority to be achieved over the next two years. “I want out in two years, and I want $xxxx!”

Business owners spend years building their businesses, nurturing, and developing them. For the most part, the very reason they started the business was inspired by a passion or an idea. Usually around a certain product or service that they felt could not only be a commercial success, but one that would make a difference.

Common Scenarios

A common scenario we encounter as CFOs at the CFO Centre is a client up to their neck in meeting the day-to-day challenges of keeping the business “running smoothly” but just don’t have the time or wherewithal to put in place the mechanisms or strategies to set the business up for succession or exit.

In fact, we find the opposite. Business owners becoming so entwined in the business that they are involved in every aspect requiring their input. This makes the business impossible to feel separate as a stand alone entity, also making it even less attractive for a prospective purchaser.

Many business owners want that elusive buyer to walk through the door and offer a nice big settlement. The owner can then sail off into the sunset with a suitcase full of retirement cash.

This is not planning this is mostly wishful thinking. However, all is not lost and this is where we at the CFO Centre can help.

As I mentioned I currently have a client that wants to sell all or some of his business that he has built over the past twenty years. It is in manufacturing and in an industry that has its own set of unique challenges in terms of risk profile. So what can we do to assist?

Just like a real estate agent advising a client the things to put in place when selling a house, we can apply independence, objectivity, and non-emotional advice on how to position a business for sale.

Like anything that is worthwhile, setting up and executing the sale of a business or putting in place a successor takes time. Furthermore, this can take years to achieve. It is not a quick fix. Like a health check we need to implement the fundamentals that make a business successful and independent. Using our matrix of twelve financial building blocks we build the platform which enables you to ‘own’ rather than ‘run’ your business.

A more in-depth discussion can be had around our 12-box program but in essence they are:

 

The 12 boxes

Ideally, we address all operational issues 1st and foremost at the outset of our engagement in conjunction with our 4 boxes of business support. Implementing the 4 fundamental operational boxes sets up a healthy platform for the business making the business all that more appealing to a prospective buyer.

Once these are in place, we then transition into more of a strategic role. We can be that mind and voice of objectivity and independence. This is especially helpful in family companies whereby that non-biased voice of reason is so critical when making strategic decisions.

Here at the CFO Centre, we have an extensive network of affiliated partners. This includes business brokers, tax accountants, legal practitioners etc. This assists in providing great support under the business support matrix (above), together with our extensive network of CFO’s and their clients. Such a large business database is helpful when trying to attract interested parties for an owner motivated to sell. Never underestimate the power of our network.

There are other ways for an owner to exit other than a sale.

The most obvious being succession planning. Someone, or a group of employees within the organisation  take over from you as the owner/operator. This does require years of training. Ideally one recruits or selects someone within the organisation that shows good leadership and management skills. Normally, this person will come with an entrenched set of skills – either sales/marketing, finance or operational. Whatever that skill base may be, one then needs to embark on a program of broadening these skills. They should encompass a good grounding in all key commercial disciplines – sales/marketing, finance and operations.

It is then critical to tie this person’s remuneration to the performance goals of the business. So when these are met, the individual concerned is rewarded – ideally through equity participation in the business. When I joined Australis Music back in 1996 as Finance Manager this was my exact path. Ultimately, I took over the CEO’s role from the Owner/Founder, Peter Hayward, in 2003. So, seven years of grooming and slowly handing the reigns. When Peter sadly passed away unexpectedly in 2006, he had done all things necessary to ensure that the company was in safe hands and that his largest asset was protected. I continued to oversee the company as CEO for three years after his passing, and ultimately sold the business to private equity.

The Moral?

The moral of this story – 7 years. 7 years it took to develop and execute the succession plan. By applying our 12 financial building boxes we can play a key role as your part time CFO. Assisting in the execution of your succession/exit plan. The key however this is a process and not a quick fix that can take years to implement.

 

4 Little Changes That’ll Make a Big Difference on your Stress Levels

4 Little Changes That’ll Make a Big Difference on your Stress Levels

Your best chance of succeeding in the fight against stress is to aim for prevention. Use these three methods to prevent stress on the individual and organizational level.

The following excerpt is from Dr. Nadine Greiner’s book Stress-Less Leadership.

Too many people wait until stress has progressed too far before taking action. But unlike other afflictions, like alcohol abuse or cancer, that only affect certain individuals, stress affects all of us — stress is not an “if” but a “when.” So, it makes sense to take preventive measures against stress.

Following are a number of methods you can use to prevent stress on the individual and organizational level. You should select the ones that feel right to you.

1. Time management

As an executive, you know there are never enough hours in the day. From streams of emails to floods of meeting requests, your time is under constant attack. Time management becomes more difficult as workloads increase, but it’s crucial to effective leadership and stress prevention.

The first step toward understanding how effective you are at time management is to do a time audit assessing how much time you spend on the activities that consume your day. Then, to-do lists, calendar apps, and time-tracking software can all help you remain on task and better understand how effectively you are dividing your time.

2. Delegating

Managers frequently struggle with delegating. Do you enjoy delegating, or does it give you anxiety? Effective delegating doesn’t just prevent stress and burnout among leaders, but it also enhances team capacity. When leaders delegate work thoughtfully, they empower their team members to take on new responsibilities and expand their skill sets. Effective delegation involves five key steps:

  1. Evaluate.Leaders must first determine whether a task should be delegated. If it’s critical for long-term success and mission-critical to the company, they may not want to delegate it. Leaders must also evaluate whether they have enough time to effectively delegate the job. Delegating shouldn’t be a rapid-fire handoff. They’ll need to spend time training, checking on progress, and engaging in constant communica­tion.
  2. Prepare.Leaders must map out exactly what’s required. They should include clear and comprehensive information about timing, budget, milestones, communication frequency, and resources.
  3. Assign. Leaders must determine which team members have the required skill set or expertise to complete the task. Ideally, it should help employees grow and expand their capabilities.
  4. Confirm understanding and commitment.Leaders often make false assumptions about whether employees under­stand what’s being asked of them. They should confirm understanding by asking their employees to summarize the request and what’s required. Managers must also get explicit commitment from their employees, who must commit to the expected results, milestones, resource requirements, and pro­posed budget.
  5. Avoid micromanaging.Once leaders hand off the baton, it’s critical to avoid micromanaging. If an employee hits a roadblock, leaders should treat this as a learning opportu­nity and not take the reins. Effective coaching will help employees understand where they’ve gone wrong and help empower them to succeed in the future.

If you struggle with delegation, consider blocking off time each day to create a plan of action. With careful planning, you and your team can succeed. Once you start delegating effectively, your team will dare to come forward more often and more vigorously.

3. Avoiding over-commitment

Do you find yourself biting off more than you can chew? Over-commitment is common among executives and leaders as they agree to take on tasks without considering whether they have enough bandwidth. But as requests and tasks pile up on each other and deadlines draw near, leaders can become overwhelmed and stressed.

Overcommitment can be crippling and lead to a kind of paralysis. The most effective antidote against over-commitment is to be firm and set boundaries. You must be vigilant about protecting your time and learn how to say “no.”

We hope you enjoyed this article courtesy of https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/337726.  Before you go, we’d like to add another tip to this list!

4. Hire a part-time CFO

The CFO Centre offers SMEs the expertise of a highly experienced CFO (Chief Financial Officer), for a fraction of the cost of a full timer, via our part-time/as needed model.  For as little as 1 day a month, our CFOs can take away your stress and help you sleep better at night.  We give our clients confidence in their numbers, confidence in their decisions, and piece of mind, knowing that they have not just our CFO, but the whole CFO Centre team on their side.

See How It Works or contact us today for a chat – 1300 447 740

 

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-showing-distress-3777572/

Where Will Your Business Be in 1 Year From Now?

Where Will Your Business Be in 1 Year From Now?

If you want your business to achieve high ambitious turnover growth of at least 20% year on year, you need a business scaling strategy that incorporates a strong vision and a solid business plan.

Helping your small business to grow, to achieve a sustained growth, will involve careful planning and most likely involve taking calculated risks.

You need to think about what you want to achieve. Where do you want to be 1 year from now?  You won’t find that easy unless you know your target market and your customers thoroughly, have products and services they’re keen to buy and be aware of the expenses you’re likely to face.

Managing Growth

To manage your company’s growth, it’s critical that you refer often to your business plan and keep an eye on the business’ key metrics, benchmarks and timelines.

You need to make sure that people have actionable activities; things that they can do and which can be measured.

As well as having repeatable processes and measuring your progress on a day-to-day basis, it’s crucial to be able and willing to adapt and be flexible if things change.

Knowing all your Numbers

Besides monitoring KPIs for turnover, gross profit percentage and salaries, it’s also important to establish KPIs for your profit per product and customer profitability.

You need to know whether you’re doing more business with each of your customers than you were doing the previous year, for example. That’s more important than focusing on going out and winning new customers.

Equally important is being aware of your balance sheet.

Other important KPIs are those that relate to your customer conversion rates, your sales profitability, and your working capital

Funding Growth

You also need to have a clear understanding of what’s achievable both in the short and long-term.

At some point, you’re likely to need to invest in the company to achieve the revenue growth and scale your business the way you want.

That might be to cover the cost of hiring of more team members, the training of your existing employees and their retention, or the development of new product lines or services to boost sales.

Like some companies, you might need additional funding to be able to hire in external experts such as the CFO Centre’s part-time CFOs to fill the personnel gaps within the company as it scales up.

You will also have to decide how you will fund the additional resources you need to sustain your growth.

Companies that enjoy strong growth are prepared to employ the right people and to raise the money they need.  Sometimes they have even personally guaranteed the loans they’ve taken out on the company’s behalf.

They’re taking well planned, well considered risks.

The more risk-averse often shy away from offering personal guarantees on loans or embarking on mergers and acquisitions that would help to fuel their rapid growth.

Invariably however you do need to borrow money to achieve growth.

Merger/Acquisition Growth

One of the fastest ways to scale your business is to merge with or acquire another business in your market. Or, in the case of retail or hotel/restaurant companies, open new branches in different locations. It could also involve forming a joint venture partnership.

You need to ensure there are alignment and support for the from all the company’s stakeholders. Including customers, senior management, non-executive directors, potential joint venture or merger partners. And your banks and other finance institutions, your accountants, and your immediate team.

The benefits of choosing the right target company for your merger or acquisition can mean your market share and assets increase.

Your new staff may have more expertise and skills than your existing employees.

The merger or acquisition may make it easier to obtain capital if or when you need it.

But this kind of inorganic growth can be problematic. The purchase price for the acquisition can be prohibitive while restructuring charges can increase expenses.  It takes time to benefit from the knowledge or technology your company has acquired through the merger or acquisition.

You may find you need to recruit more managers to cope with the increased workforce.

The business may move in a direction you never anticipated. Or the new company may grow too quickly which puts it at greater risk.

Often, the combination of organic and inorganic growth gives you the best outcome. Your company can diversify its revenue base without having to rely purely on current operations to grow your market share.

Three tips to scale your business

  1. Be open minded about taking on investment. Scaling your business will be hard work and you need to find a way to do it without running out of cash.
  2. Conduct market research to ensure people want to buy what you’re offering. It’s got to interest and excite them so much they’re willing to hand over cash for it.
  3. Reward your employees and make sure they understand and are engaged with your vision for the business. You’ve got to bring them on the journey.

Contact us now if you want to learn how a part-time CFO (Chief Financial Officer) can help you to implement the best business growth strategy.

How to Outsmart Your Competitors with a Business Plan

How to Outsmart Your Competitors with a Business Plan

Most business owners know that without a comprehensive, up-to-date business plan and an implementation timetable, they may be missing out on opportunities for growth and not realising their full potential.  However, around 30% of SMEs don’t have one. To ensure you’re ahead of your competitors, it’s imperative to find the time and/or resources to create and implement a plan for the start of the new financial year.

A formal plan can be an extremely valuable tool for managing and growing a business. It allows a company to recognize its strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, research has shown that SMEs that have a business plan in place are consistently more profitable than those who don’t.

A Formal Plan

Planning is the key to the success of any business, no matter its size or age.  Yet many SMEs don’t have a plan. The majority of those without such a plan say they don’t believe it’s necessary or that they keep their plans in their head.

It’s concerning that so many small and medium-sized businesses don’t have a formal business plan. Without clear direction, they may be missing out on opportunities for growth and not realizing their full potential.  A plan is invaluable and should see out the company’s:

  1. Strategic direction
  2. Main operating and financial targets;
  3. Actions it will take to achieve those targets,
  4. New initiatives and investments planned;
  5. And their impact on the company’s performance

Creation and Implementation

Creating a well thought-through, comprehensive business plan is an arduous task. Thinking through objectives and likely outcomes which may occur many years down the line is challenging. But it is the hard work up front which makes for lighter work down the road as all of our team of part-time CFOs will attest to.

Most CEOs and business owners simply don’t have the time to spend on quality strategic thinking or to document and communicate that thinking in a way which allows the whole business to buy into the vision.

Harder still is managing and implementing the business plan. Significant strategic course corrections are commonplace in fast-growing companies. These should be embraced. The tricky part though is in managing regular change. That requires a combination of time and specialist knowledge.

There is an art and science to effective business planning and getting it right brings a real sense of clarity and direction to business – this is where an experienced part-time CFO can make a significant contribution.

Not spending quality time on strategic planning usually leads to a chaotic working environment. Our clients often talk about ‘not feeling in control’ and ‘not really knowing what is coming around the next corner’.

Proper business planning is very liberating for the business owner, whatever their objective might be. A well-constructed and regularly reviewed business plan will instil real confidence that the goal is indeed achievable.

Key Benefits

Writing a business plan has many benefits for businesses of any size and in any industry. It can help owners and senior managers to:

  1. Clarify objectives and develop suitable strategies.
  2. Understand the market.
  3. Identify and overcome internal and external threats
  4. Organise the company
  5. Access external funding

Key Elements

The most important part of your business plan is its financial information. Your financial forecasts should include your cash flow predictions for the next 12 months or more. You’ll also need to include sales estimates and costs to ensure the business has enough working capital or to ensure you understand any needs to arrange additional financing.

You need to explain all assumptions in the business plan, with best and worst case scenarios. Detail the risks you’re likely to face and how they will be dealt with.

Conclusion

  • An up-to-date business plan or ‘roadmap’ in your business will allow you to experience a sense of control, which may have been absent since the day you started your company.
  • The business plan will remove a significant amount of confusion from your operating procedures. There will always be challenges contained within new projects but you will have a proper framework against which all decision-making can take place.
  • The plan provides the blueprint for delegating responsibility to your team and allows you to create some space in your own environment to work on growing your business.
  • You will move out of the chaos and into a more serene working environment where each of the gears, which make up the bigger system, is able to move in harmony.
  • Potential hazards will have been identified in advance and dealt with before they become unmanageable. You will be able to move from a culture of fire-fighting to a culture of fire-prevention and the benefits will be felt by each member of your team and most probably by your customers too.
  • A part-time CFO can assist with creating, implementing and reviewing your Business Plan, as well as be a constant guide and sounding board for you.

The business plan is the first key to profitable growth!

Photo by fauxels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-people-doing-handshakes-3183197/

Hazards To Growth

Hazards To Growth

There can be a low-level panic that suffuses an organisation. A constant pressure to keep moving faster and faster and faster.  It’s no secret that companies can grow too fast, stretching both culture and controls.

Imagine this: a multi-million-dollar company with almost 200 employees. The founder likes to micromanage to the point he (not the HR department) has sole approval over employee benefits such as requests for time off for holidays.

The company doesn’t have a dedicated IT employee or team. That’s because that same founder believes its gifted employees should be able to resolve any IT problems that occur! No matter if doing so pulls them away from developing products or resolving customer problems.

It might sound far-fetched, but these are just a few of the problems companies can face during an accelerated growth or scale-up stage.

Challenges of Scaling Up

While your scaling up might not experience the internal and external challenges above, you are likely to face at least one or two challenges. It might be:

  • People challenges
  • Sales and marketing challenges
  • Operational challenges
  • Administrative challenges
  • Financial challenges.

As the CFO Centre’s founder Colin Mills said in his book, ‘Scale Up: How to Take Your Business To The Next Level Without Losing Control and Running out of Cash’, the scale-up stage is when businesses really struggle because they’re growing but don’t have the infrastructure to support their expanded operations.

They might have the necessary revenue, manufacturing base, or customer reach of a substantial business. However, their controls, processes, personnel, leadership and culture are often still that of the much smaller business they were a short time before, he said.

Worse, they often don’t have the resources to create and maintain such an infrastructure.

During the scale-up stage, they face running out of cash or simply getting stuck, he said.

Revising your business model

It’s only possible to avoid such problems by revising your entire business model. If you don’t, then all the small problems that niggle at you now are likely to become major issues once you begin scaling up.

Even if your business is already going through the scaling up stage, it’s still possible to retrofit, design, and redesign it, he said.

Don’t get lost in the complexity

“In many ways, like most things in life, scaling up is not rocket science. No genius is required, said Mills. It can often be about common sense. “But common sense isn’t always common practice, and being able to focus on the most important things as you scale up is a skill that can get lost in the complexity of the whole process.”

One solution

The easiest way to focus on what’s important during the scaling up stage is to have expert help with big business experience.

For a fraction of the cost of a full-time CFO, the CFO Centre will provide you with a highly experienced senior CFO. They will work with you on a part-time basis to help you with scaling up your business. To discover how the CFO Centre will help your company to scale up, please contact us here.

Step Back and Allow Yourself to Dream

Step Back and Allow Yourself to Dream

The Challenge

One of the toughest challenges for owners of SMEs is to be able to stand back. To look at their business through a wide-angle lens and identify what it is they really have.

When you started your company, you almost certainly allowed yourself to dream. Every successful business operator needs ambition. But as we’ve seen, all too often those aspirations become bogged down in the everyday grind of keeping a business afloat.

Because quite often, the day-to-day distractions and diversions that inevitably surround the running of a successful business get in the way. This affects sensible, objective evaluation and strategic decision-making. Crucially, important opportunities can go at best un-exploited and at worst, un-noticed.

If this resonates with you, what can you do to change the status quo? Ultimately you need an extra pair of hands at a senior level to free up your time and allow you the time to dream.

The Solution

The key could be a CFO (Chief Financial Officer).  Whether that is promoting from within, hiring a full timer for a large business, or using a part-time CFO making it affordable for SMEs.

A CFO can be that extra pair of hands to free up your time by ensuring the smooth running of the finance function. They will also being a senior sounding board, taking on some of your worries as well as:

  • help decode your dream
  • turn your dream into a plan
  • be the one to hold you to account to make it happen.

Great CFOs are catalysts. They can help you break the pattern of linear growth and get you what you really want on an expedited timetable.

Your dream is achieved by developing a concise roadmap based on what you want to achieve. The role of the CFO is to help you identify and unlock that potential. Thus, freeing the dream and making it a reality.

Of course this is not to suggest that success comes easily. Business challenges are usually complicated and risky. That’s another reason why potential isn’t always realised.

If you’d like to learn more about how our part-time/as needed CFOs can help you unlock and realise the true potential in your business, please contact us

Photo by carolyn christine on Unsplash

6 Keys to Successful Company Growth

6 Keys to Successful Company Growth

If you want to grow your business successfully, then you need to get the basics right. In this article, we’ll delve into our top six tips on how to grow a company successfully.

1. Clear Vision and effective communication

The most important thing that determines business success is the business owner’s thinking. Allowing yourself time to think, dream and get a clear vision is essential to business growth.  Without a clear vision and effectively communicating it, how will you and your employees know where they are going? If the business owner has a clear vision, and shares it with all stakeholders, it’s highly likely that the business will also go in the same direction.

2. Set your goals and develop growth strategies

Your goals for your business will provide an overall framework for everyone to follow. The strategies you’ll use to achieve those goals should serve as a roadmap. It will help you to build a structure and bring a focus to decision making.

Once you’ve translated your goals into strategies, you can develop systems and processes that will help with the smooth running of the business.

Many businesses fail in the execution of their strategy. Don’t be afraid. It’s better to execute a mediocre plan correctly than it is to execute a perfect plan poorly.

3. Employ or outsource top-performing talent

A successful business depends on its people. That is hard-working, determined people whose goals are aligned with the organisation’s goals.

The more your organisation is seen to trust employees with responsibility and to invest in their career development, the more likely it is to attract and retain top performers.

But rather than rush to hire people as you scale up, consider outsourcing tasks and using freelancers or temps. This could save you from hiring the wrong people and facing costly turnover.

Sir Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group, says, “There is little point recruiting great people if you don’t then give them the autonomy to take their role and run with it.  It also frees you up as the founder to focus less on the day-to-day activities and more on the over-arching objectives laid out in your roadmap.”

4. Attracting and retaining customers

To build your business, you also need to develop a system to attract and retain high-quality customers.  For that to happen, you must understand your customers’ needs and pain points. What burning needs do they have? What keeps them from falling asleep at night?

Your customers must believe that your products or services will meet their needs or overcome their challenges.

Many business owners make the mistake of focusing their entire sales and marketing efforts and budget on attracting new customers. They often overlook the needs of their existing customers.

Ignoring your existing customers is a huge mistake. People don’t like to feel as if businesses take them for granted once they’ve placed an order. If they feel neglected, they’re likely to move to another company.

It doesn’t matter if you run a small business or a large corporation. Your company must deliver an exceptional customer service experience.

5. Know the Hazards

Rapid growth might be desirable, but your company must be able to cope with its effects. For instance, can your company meet a sudden influx of orders? What impact would that have on your cash flow?  There are dangers of scaling up too fast. They include:

  •         Hiring the wrong people
  •         Losing track of your finances
  •         Management mistakes
  •         Not maintaining customer service
  •         Ineffective business operations
  •         Technology problems
  •         Cash flow mistakes

6. Stay Focussed

The easiest way to stay focused on what’s important during the scaling up stage is to have expert help from a part-time CFO who has big business experience.

For a fraction of the cost of a full-time CFO, the CFO Centre can provide you with a highly experienced CFO who will work with you on a part-time basis to help you with scaling up your business.

Get in contact with us today so we can book in a consultation meeting with one of our dedicated Regional Directors.

“Most people never pick up the phone and call; most people never ask. And that’s what separates, sometimes, the people that do things from the people that just dream about them.” – Steve Jobs, Apple’s Co-founder.

 

Photo by Basil James on Unsplash

Why Every Business Benefits From a Part-Time CFO

Why Every Business Benefits From a Part-Time CFO

A typical company finance function can be divided up into 3 areas. However, many businesses believe the finance role is principally to produce accurate accounts.

Ask any bank manager and he or she will tell you the bank’s most problematic customers are those who don’t truly understand what is going on in their business. Some customers ask for finance or expect to maintain an overdraft, yet cannot even produce up to date accounts.

Most SME business owners want to focus on the business and not the numbers. The business is their baby and they want it to be their sole focus – not financials!

The areas which the business owner will seek help in first will be determined by the focus and needs of the business whether in sales, operations, admin or finance. If we look at the finance function, it is traditional to break it down into 3 roles:

3 roles of the finance function

1. Financial direction – the CFO

2. Financial control – the Accountant

3. Book-keeping/basic accounting/ AP & AR – the Finance Department Staff

Many business owners think the finance role is transactional in nature and so concentrate just on producing accurate accounting records. This is essential in itself, but not enough to manage and develop a growing business. When focusing on the CFO role specifically then, what are the key tasks of this role and what does the CFO bring that the other finance roles do not?  Why would you need a CFO?

I suggest the following four main areas of expertise and input:

1.Strategic

Co-ordinating and developing long term business plans; defining the implementation timetables; assessing the risks involved and seeking the funding required to deliver the proposed plans.

2.Operational

Developing internal controls; managing and developing the reports needed to run the business; improving profit levels; managing cash flows. Does the business owner fully understand the profitability of each product / service they offer? Often the answer is no.

3.Leader

Instilling a financial approach and mind-set throughout the organisation to help other ​parts of the business perform better ​

4.Support

Tax planning and legal issues; compliance issues; managing external relationships; outsourcing relationships.

The modern CFO needs to be able to develop all this and more. There are many other considerations that go beyond the pure “job description” above.

What’s the difference between an accountant and a CFO?

A CFO looks forward and financial accounting looks backwards; it’s where your business is going that matters as the past cannot be changed – but learnings can be made and changes made so that past mistakes not repeated.

Experience: it is important that a CFO has a wide range of commercial experience, not just financial. Good CFOs do not learn their skills from textbooks alone, in fact they learn very little from textbooks – they learn by doing. Commercial experience means leaving their offices and talking to customers and engaging with the production and operations teams.

Personality: a CFO must be able to communicate at all levels be it the production teams, sales teams, marketing teams to board level. The CFO must be able to relate to people on all levels of a business.

The CFO Centre provides high calibre CFOs to SMEs on a part time basis, allowing organisations to benefit from the expertise of a highly experienced Chief Financial Officer without incurring the expense of hiring someone full-time. We don’t tie you in with a long term contract.

Whether the business in in fast growth mode and needs control or has hit a brick wall and needs survival solutions to get through a tough patch, our CFO’s can cope with both ends of the spectrum.

For more information about the CFO Centre’s service see How it Works  or call us on 1300 447 740

 

Article written by Peter O’Sullivan – Regional Director – CFO Centre, Victoria