What Outcomes Should You Expect From a CFO Services Engagement?
“Begin with the end in mind.”
This time-tested advice holds true in most areas of business, and of life in general. It’s especially good advice for any CEO who is considering engaging an outsourced CFO services provider.
Before entering into such an engagement, you should think carefully about the outcomes you hope to achieve from the engagement. Otherwise, you won’t have any criteria against which to measure the performance of the outsourced CFO services firm—or whether you’ve achieved a satisfactory return on your investment in the engagement.
Potential Outcomes to Consider
Consider the following list of potential outcomes that companies might expect as a result of an engagement with an outsourced CFO services firm:
Enhanced productivity
The outsourced CFO should be able to indentify inefficiencies in your business and your financial operations and prescribe solutions that will increase productivity, both among staff and in your core processes, financial and otherwise.
Higher profitability
Enhanced productivity, in turn, should result in higher gross and net profit margins.
Improved overall financial performance
In addition to boosting productivity and profits and controlling costs, an outsourced CFO should also help you increase revenue, ROI and, ultimately, overall shareholder value.
Reduced costs and/or better cost controls
With the perspective of an objective outsider, the outsourced CFO can usually spot waste and suggest and implement cost-reduction and control strategies.
A higher level of overall financial control
With this control, you and your executives can better understand the “big picture” of your company’s finances and make better strategic business and financial decisions. It also enables you to think and act more proactively, rather than reactively.
New opportunities
All of this may place your business in a better position to take advantage of new and unexpected marketplace opportunities as they arise.
The meeting of compliance, restatement and other deadlines
Your existing staff may not have the capacity to meet such critical time-specific deadlines, but the outsourced CFO should bring the necessary expertise and focus to make sure they are met.
A more strategic focus
This is one of the greatest benefits of hiring an outsourced CFO: The ability to focus more on your business’ core competencies, as well as other strategic areas of you staff and the business.
Greater satisfaction and peace of mind
Ultimately, engaging an outsourced CFO services provider should provide you and your executives with more satisfaction, since you will have the assurance that your company is operating at peak financial efficiency. And this may provide peace of mind that is hard to put a price tag on.
Concluding Thoughts
CFO Edge has worked a number of Southern California companies like yours to help them achieve outcomes like these. Our CFOs become trusted, fully integrated members of our clients’ teams—a result of our goal to place CFOs who are a good fit with clients in terms of personality, work style and culture. This helps ensure a successful collaboration so that our clients realize the gains and financial outcomes that were targeted at the outset of the engagement.
Most importantly, our clients experience the satisfaction and peace of mind that come from delegating high-level objectives and tasks to experienced financial professionals who are capable of executing these tasks in ways that don’t just meet—but exceed—their expectations.
In the ninth and final article in this series, CFO Services in Action: Mini Case Studies, we’ll describe several real-life scenarios where CFO Edge was able to successfully accomplish the objectives and outcomes identified and targeted by our clients.
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