The Benefits of a Fractional CFO
CFO - On Demand
Our specialized CFO on Demand services offer businesses the expertise of seasoned Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) without the commitment of a full-time hire. These professionals provide tailored financial guidance and strategic insights, ensuring sound fiscal management aligned with the company’s goals.
- If you’re like most businesses, you’re successful because you focus on a problem and solve it efficiently and cost-effectively. You fully understand the needs of your customers and have the people, processes, and technology in place to deliver a high-quality solution. The economies of scale, readiness and expertise that you provide simply make it infeasible for your customer to build or solve it on their own, which is why they buy from you.
- There is a growing trend in small and mid-market companies to focus more on what they do best, and outsource functions that can be provided more effectively by partner firms. You probably have vendors that provide critical components services that help you create and deliver your final product or service. You outsource those pieces because it simply makes sense for your business.
- As your company grows, the need for greater experience and more sophistication in accounting and finance will also grow. Operations, controls, cash management, modeling and decision making simply become more and more complex. At some point, most companies are faced with a decision – do we hire a full-time CFO and if so, what level of CFO do we need? Many firms faced with these decisions may not need a full-time CFO at all. They may benefit greatly from a fractional CFO.
Why hire a fractional CFO?
There are many reasons why companies choose to hire a fractional CFO:
- Experience, Expertise and Value
- Depth of Resources
- Special Project Expertise
- Hybrid Model
Experience, Expertise and Value
At the simplest level, a company is able to gain a CFO with a high level of experience and expertise, but without the cost of salary, benefits and bonuses of a full-time employee. They are able to contract for exactly what they need now, with the flexibility to adjust as their needs change in the future.
Depth of Resources
A fractional CFO is typically backed by an accounting firm with deep experience, expertise, and resources. They have the personnel to accommodate any size company and have expertise across a variety of industries. They have established best practices in process, controls, and reporting thathave been successfully implemented at many other companies. They intimately understand a variety of technology solutions that help a company track operations, stay in control, and make intelligent decisions based on real-time data. This foundation helps a fractional CFO bring a tremendous amount of value to a company.
Special Project Expertise
Quite often, companies will encounter very specific or unique challenges. When it comes to special projects such as cash flow challenges, buying or selling a business, product pricing, or selecting and implementing accounting software, a fractional CFO has the ability to quickly call on and leverage other experts within their firm. The ideas and changes brought about by leveraging the collective expertise of the fractional CFO and their accounting firm can be invaluable.
Hybrid Model
A company may need to add full-time finance and accounting personnel internally. A fractional CFO can help a company assess their needs, and identify, hire and manage full-time employees to fit those needs. This hybrid model helps a company maintain certain finance and accounting functions inhouse while outsourcing others.