How a Part-Time CFO Will Conduct Risk Analysis on Your Business

The CFO Centre will provide you with a highly experienced senior CFO with ‘big business experience’ for a fraction of the cost of a full-time CFO.

This means you will have:

• One of Canada’s leading CFOs, working with you on a part-time basis
• A local support team of the highest calibre CFOs
• A national and international collaborative team of the top CFOs sharing best practice (the power of hundreds)
• Access to our national and international network of clients and partners

With all that support and expertize at your fingertips, you will achieve better results, faster. It means you’ll have more confidence and clarity when it comes to decision-making. After all, you’ll have access to expert help and advice whenever you need it.

In particular, your part-time CFO will work closely with you to take on the burden of designing the roadmap for the business.

Although our review process will reveal areas of weakness you specifically require help with, we take a very proactive approach to finding out where we can best help you. In other words, we don’t expect you to tell us what you need because that way, you are left to do the thinking. We work through a detailed methodology to ensure that no stone is left unturned.

Your part-time CFO will work with you to understand the risk profile of the business and of the shareholders. Too many initiatives launching or running concurrently can be problematic.

By managing the company’s risk profile and the risk profiles of the shareholders the whole business can be brought into alignment and can operate as a unit rather than as a set of individual parts.

When our part-time CFOs look at ‘risk’ in your business, they also work with you to:

• Identify future risk areas across the business and share that information with key employees.
• Include significant risk areas in the business plan.
• Test assumptions to find weaknesses in the business plan.
• Evaluate alternative scenarios and approaches which may lead to improved outcomes.
• Consider contingency plans in case things go wrong.
• Provide forecasts based on risk analysis.
• Provide your organization with an elevated sense of credibility (with a high calibre CFO as part of the team) your organization will be perceived by funders and other third parties as a much ‘lower risk’.
• Act as a sounding board to discuss and critique your plans.
• Liaise with funders when circumstances change.
• Test the effectiveness of your marketing.
• Test the effectiveness of your operating procedures.
• Identify problem areas before they become unmanageable.
• Correct mistakes quickly before they cost too much.
• Develop incentive schemes for staff to lower the risk of losing key members of the team. After all, replacing employees is a costly enterprise. The average fee for replacing a departing staff member is £30,614 [$56,000], says Oxford Economics and income protection providers Unum.
• Coach you and your department heads through the implementation process.
• Safeguard all intellectual property including patents.
• Implement hedging strategies where there are financial risks such as currency or interest rate exposure.
• Improve resourcing to strengthen performance.
• To re-engineer the business as and when the competitive landscape changes.
• Improve customer relations where they pose a threat to the business.
• Use our own experience and the experience of the wider CFO Centre team and expanded contact network to help surround you with the best possible team.
• Help you achieve your work/life balance objectives (careful planning is key to freeing up your time and energy).
• Guide you through the business growth stages so you know what to expect and how to deal with changes.
• Help create a clear roadmap for delegating responsibilities and tasks out to your team to create more time and space for developing the business.
• Help communicate the business objectives to your family where appropriate (it can often help to have a third party involved who understands the needs and concerns of your family).
• Devise a reporting structure which acts as an early warning system for problems.
• Liaise with lawyers to understand possible legislative changes and ensure compliance.
• Investigate existing insurances and make sure that you are adequately covered if things do not go according to plan.
• Look into hedging strategies for borrowing abroad for example to fund overseas subsidiaries.
• Reduce your personal risk by looking into other types of security/funding.

Conclusion

It is never possible in business to eliminate risk or worry, but it is possible to create a framework and implement systems which lower your exposure to risk. That in turn allows you to focus primarily on growing your business.

Knowing that you have a framework in place to mitigate risk means that you can free up time and mental energy.

Lower your risk today!

Let one of The CFO Centre’s part-time CFOs help you with business risk analysis. To book your free one-to-one call with one of our part-time CFOs get in touch on:
tel: 1-800-918-1906
email: [email protected]
www.thecfocentre.ca