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The CFO Centre Group is delighted to announce the inclusion of Sara Daw, CEO of The Liberti Group and The CFO Centre Group in the 2024 E2E Female 100 Track in association with  The Independent.

The E2E Female100 track is a prestigious award which recognises female-led enterprises in the UK, boasting a turnover surpassing £10 million over the preceding biennium. It symbolises a resolute commitment to celebrating the trailblazing spirit of female entrepreneurs and leaders across many sectors. The E2E Female100 track serves as a spotlight on UK-based companies that not only excel in their respective domains but also foster consistent employee growth and spearhead transformative business strategies. These enterprises have a secure impact on a national and, in select instances, global scale.

Sara is delighted with the award and what it means for the wider team:

“Not only am I honoured to achieve this personal recognition, I’m also thrilled that female leadership is being appreciated in this way and that the spotlight is on us all for everything we’ve achieved together as part The CFO Centre and the wider Liberti Group.”

Speaking about the track, Shalini Khemka CBE, founder of E2E says: “The E2E Female 100 has allowed us to highlight the amazing companies throughout the UK with a turnover of £25 million plus. These are companies that despite a challenging economy and a challenging few years, have generated exceptional turnover results and are continuing to grow at a rapid rate.”

Colin Mills, Founder and Chairman of The Liberti Group commented on the business’ inclusion within the track “It is a huge honour for The Liberti Group to be recognised in this way, to be part of this group of females and to be representative of females in business.”

Colin added “It provides validation of all the hard work and effort from our team over the years. This will create awareness in the business community that by engaging with C-suite talent on a fractional or part-time basis, business owners can build and scale their businesses faster and with greater certainty, changing their lives and that of their colleagues.”

The full track can be viewed  here.

As the owner of a small business, you will understand that financial success means more than just producing profits. Robust financial management is essential for the growth and longevity of your company. If managing finances isn’t in your area of expertise and hiring a full-time CFO is not within reach, you may need to consider hiring a portfolio CFO to help you achieve your financial objectives. Our team of fractional CFOs can provide guidance on how best to use resources throughout your organisation.

At The CFO Centre, our team of portfolio CFOs play a crucial role in helping small businesses across the nation reach their goals. Our model gives business owners:

• Access to the very best strategic CFO skills and experience,
• significantly lower fees than a full-time CFO,
• independent assessment of viability,
• the ability to maximise the growth of their business through relevant actions.

With an external point of view on budgeting, financial best practices, performance metrics, compliance implementation, strategy development, and oversight; they offer invaluable resources beneficial to organisations of any size.

Read this blog post and learn more about why having access to a dedicated CFO is the right move to take your small business to the next level.

Accelerate Growth with a Fractional CFO

With experienced financial leadership, a business’s potential for growth should never be underestimated. It is important to create positive, achievable goals and strive to reach them even when times are hard. Continuing your journey of success with the addition of a portfolio CFO is exciting and our team understand that growth is not only possible but necessary for your business.

Growth can come in many forms; whether it be increases in revenue, acquisitions of new technology, overhauling operations and processes, or developing your team. Whatever the change might bring, entrepreneurs now more than ever understand the value of assessing potential opportunities for development early on. By staying informed and evaluating often, you will have a better chance at achieving your long-term goals. With open channels of communication and an understanding of managing growth, a portfolio CFO could be your most valuable asset for future economic health and progress.

Reviewing the potential for business growth is commonplace among entrepreneurs and it is important to consider the positive outcomes of hiring a portfolio CFO when doing so. At The CFO Centre, we are confident in our Chief Financial Officers and their proven ability to scale businesses. You have the power and freedom to hire a fractional CFO who aligns with you and your business needs, wants, and visions. Whatever the size of your business – you can have confidence in our team to help you achieve your growth goals while maintaining your focus on those numbers that really matter to you.

When you review the functions that a CFO will support in your business (chart taken from Raconteur), there is no doubt that hiring a portfolio CFO is a valuable and affordable addition to your team. This person will help streamline and improve the efficiency of your business. Not to mention, working with a portfolio CFO will free up your time for other employees and business goals, allowing them to focus and specialise in their core duties. No matter your size, our knowledgeable teams can help maximise return on investment – an essential component for any business looking to grow.

All things considered, if you are serious about propelling your business forward, give our team a try and have the confidence knowing that you have a high-calibre Chief Financial Officer by your side.

If you want to scale up your business and make it a success, you should begin by asking yourself a couple of tough questions about your company’s capability and its capacity to deal with growth. This is not the time for egos and optimism; it’s time for honest reflection. You need to get a clear perspective on your current position. Many entrepreneurs tell us that they find this hard. They’re too close to their businesses and that means they don’t have the perspective to assess the situation clearly. To overcome this, you could consider turning to a trusted professional, like a CFO, or you might have a business mentor or coach who can give you dispassionate advice.

Before you begin scaling your business, these are the 2 tough questions that every entrepreneur should ask:

1. Is your company capable of growing? Are you and the employees in your company capable of dealing with a growing amount of work or sales and of doing it cost-effectively? What happens if your company achieves exponential growth? Will your costs rise exponentially as a result?
2. Does your company have the capacity to deal with growth? Can your business systems, employees, and infrastructure scale up fast to meet demand? For instance, if you get a sudden surge in orders, will your company be able to cope? Will you be still able to manufacture and deliver products or services on time? Do you have enough employees to deal with a surge in work or sales?

As you scale up your business, it’s really important that your quality and performance stay the same. You’ve built a reputation for delivering a certain standard and you don’t want to lose that by scaling up without robust plans in place. You also don’t want to run out of money because your rapid growth hits your cash flow.

Once you’ve finished your review, it’s time for you to work out which of the 7 factors for a successful business scale-up you’re going to need. Investing in the preparation stage is the key to success – when you get this right, you can scale up rapidly and meet your goals. Remember to keep sight of your personal goals (what we call the Numbers That Really Matter), as well as your targets for your business. At The CFO Centre, we have a passion for helping clients balance what’s important to feel accomplished both in their work and as humans.

You can see that you are going to need some careful planning and some funding to scale your business. You’ll also need to have the right systems, processes, technology, staff, finance, and even partners in place. If this sounds a bit daunting, don’t worry! Our CFOs have shared their incredible wealth of knowledge and experience so we can provide you with the 7 factors that they find in all effective business scale-ups.

1. Identify the gaps in your processes

You need to audit your business processes (core processes, support processes, and management processes) to find their strengths and weaknesses. Find the process gaps and address them before you start to scale up.

Keep the processes simple and straightforward. Remember that complex processes slow things down and hinder progress.

2. How will you boost sales when you scale up?

Ask yourself what your company needs to do to increase sales. How many new customers will you need to meet your scaled-up goals?

Create a sales growth forecast that details the number of new clients you need, the orders, and the revenue you want to generate.

Examine your existing sales structure and decide if it can generate more sales. Can you increase your flow of leads? Do you need to offer different products or services? Is there an untapped market? Do you have a marketing system to track and manage leads? Is your sales team capable of following up and closing more leads?

Make sure you have enough staff to cope with an increase in sales. If you don’t have enough staff, consider hiring new employees, outsourcing tasks, or finding partners that may be able to handle functions more efficiently than your company.

3. Forecast scaling up costs as accurately as possible

Once you’ve done the sales growth forecast, create an expense forecast. This should include the new technology, employees, infrastructure, and systems you’ll need so you are ready to handle the new sales orders. The more detailed your cost estimates, the more realistic your plan will be.

4. Get funding to cover your business expansion

If you need to hire more staff, install new technology, add facilities or equipment, and create new reporting systems, you’ll need money to invest. If you don’t have enough reserves to do this then you need to find money another way. Check out our helpful article if you aren’t sure how to fund your company’s growth.

5. Make delighting customers a priority

To reach your sales forecasts, your company will need loyal customers. You’ll win their loyalty by delivering outstanding products or services and customer service every time you interact with them. Don’t let scaling up reduce your quality.

6. Invest in the right technology

As you scale up, you and your team will find that manual tasks become overwhelming. If you leap from processing 5 website sales each day (for example) to 5 sales per hour, your employees will quickly get overwhelmed. You need to be ready to invest in technology that will automate tasks and you need to allow enough time to find the technology, migrate from your old system and train your team. In the end, all businesses depend on automation to bring costs down and make production more efficient.

Another important point in this area is integrating technology. You can have the best systems in the world but your business will struggle to thrive if they aren’t integrated. You need robust, scaleable systems that work smoothly together.

7. Successful scale-up is hard – ask for help

Don’t be afraid to ask for help from experts who have experience in scaling up companies. We love this quote from an interview with Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs. He said,

“I’ve never found anybody who didn’t want to help me when I’ve asked them for help.”

“I’ve never found anyone who’s said no or hung up the phone when I called – I just asked.”

“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. You gotta act. And you’ve gotta be willing to fail; you gotta be ready to crash and burn, with people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

You can ask a high-profile entrepreneur for help, turn to a trusted mentor or recruit a part-time CFO to sit beside you. Whatever you choose, you will need a supportive, non-judgmental partner. A person who will help you develop a forward-looking, scale-up strategy that delivers the right numbers so your business can grow and fulfil your aspirations.

Find out how an experienced scaling-up CFO can help you

Would you like a chance to talk to someone who understands exactly how to de-risk your scale-up? We’re pretty sure the answer is “yes” so why not book a no-obligation, 30-minute discovery call with one of our expert CFOs?

Simply give us a call on 0800 169 1499 and let our in-house team know that you’re looking to scale up your business. They’ll book your call and help you get your journey to success underway.

 

The use of management dashboards to monitor management KPIs, metrics, and other essential data points will allow you and your management team to make rapid, data-based decisions based on up-to-date information about your business.

A management dashboard provides you with a comprehensive snapshot of the company’s performance. This is critical since it condenses massive amounts of information into a one-page summary that can provide invaluable insight into the health of your company and help with executive decision-making.

It allows you and your managers to access the most relevant information instantly.

The data is represented graphically using tables, line charts, bar charts, sparklines, maps, or gauges so you and other users can see the information at a glance.

They also allow you and other users to drill down to investigate further if necessary.

Types of business dashboards

There are three types of business dashboards:

• Operational dashboards which emphasise monitoring. These reflect the business processes and help monitor KPIs.
• Strategic dashboards which emphasise management. They reflect the end status of a KPI or metric for a set period.
• Tactical dashboards that highlight analysis. They will help you to identify trends and to track how metrics have changed.

Finance dashboard

Your finance dashboard should offer a summary and interpretation of key aspects such as profit and loss, and cash management.

Sales and Marketing dashboard

Your marketing dashboard should provide insight into how successful the company’s marketing efforts are at generating sales and attracting and retaining customers. You should be able to see where people are getting ‘stuck’ in your sales funnel or pipeline.

Risk management dashboard

Your operation and safety dashboard should help you and your team to manage and prevent risk. It could include training and awareness, incident management, claims, compliance, risks for assets and projects, and hazard identification.

HR dashboard

Your HR dashboard should provide reports on internal metrics such as employee satisfaction as well as external metrics such as your company’s success rates for recruitment. Depending on the size of the organisation, it could also be used to track turnover and retention rates.

The benefits of using management dashboards

• Instant access to core business metrics

Users across your organisation will be able to access core business metrics.

• Consolidate data from across multiple analytic services

The management dashboard consolidates data from many data points in an organisation to provide one reporting interface. It will save time and effort typically spent on compiling reports, signing into different analytic services and then sharing the data to everyone in the company.

• Provide real-time updates

Since changes in data or values is reflected in dashboards, you can identify fluctuations in crucial business metrics when they happen rather than having to wait for daily or weekly reports.

• Align departments

Dashboards can provide metrics that are relevant to each department.

• Allow root cause analysis

If you spot unusual trends in your summary reports, you can drill down to find their root cause.

• Communicate and manage strategy

Dashboards can be used as agents to boost organisational change.

How to design the best dashboard

A well-designed dashboard will help improve your company’s productivity and save time, but a badly-designed dashboard will confuse users and challenging to share. It needs to be easy to use and to report the most meaningful data and insights.

That’s why it’s critical that you select the right metrics to display. Avoid the temptation to add as many metrics as you can. If you need to monitor lots of metrics, use dashboard tabs.

Keep the design simple to make it easier for people to read and to digest the information. Avoid using too many colours or fonts or different graphics. Group data in a way that’s relevant and which provides context.

To encourage as broad a range of users as possible, make the dashboard interactive with options to filter and drill down.

Decide the reporting frequency based on the type of dashboard you’re using. For example, structure operational dashboards so they provide daily reports and set up strategic dashboards to give a monthly or quarterly report.

Find out more ➜