There’s no such thing as a full-time FD role in most small or medium businesses. But if this is true then what can a small or medium-sized business do when it needs some experienced, practical financial input? A part time CFO might be the answer.
The first challenge for the management team is to recognise that they have some problems that can’t be dealt with by the existing finance staff.
This may be tough to do because you don’t know what you don’t know. However, some common indicators that all is not well with your business financials may include:
If you’re concerned about some or all of these symptoms then what can you do?
The expensive and slow answer is to recruit a senior financial person at Financial Controller or CFO level. A solution that’s quicker to implement and which will most likely turn out to be cheaper is to look for an interim or a part time finance director.
Someone who knows what they are doing will have a meeting with you in which they should very quickly get to diagnose the financial issues in your business. Once identified, these issues need to be prioritised and then resolved.
What you see next will probably include:
All this can be done quickly, some of it may need to be!
The race is on to get the business working more profitably on “automatic pilot” and once this is in sight the input of the part time Finance Director can scale down and perhaps come to an end.
The interim or part time Finance Director option works well because it’s quick to implement and it recognises that once the problems are solved you can go back to a lower-cost level of resource which will consistently get the right job done in the future.
We may be part of the solution for you.
Because we do this work for clients on a regular basis.
If some of the problems described here are achingly familiar and you need some help, please give Michael Austin a call on 020 7125 0270 or email info@bluedotconsulting.co.uk.
Let’s meet, have a coffee and a good, long, confidential chat about your business.
Michael – @bluedotmichael
Related links:
Switching accountant – you can kiss a lot of frogs
We don’t believe in forms, we believe in talking to people, finding out your needs and tailor-making a solution just for you.
Give us a ring on 020 7125 0270 or email us at info@bluedotconsulting.co.uk
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