The San Fernando Valley Business Journal published an article a couple of days ago that validates the CFO Services that so many start-up, emerging, and medium-sized companies utilize. Titled Businesses Lean on Outsourced CFOs During Down Times, the author highlights the benefits that an outsourced CFO can bring to a business, including helping them grow, avoid pitfalls, and solve short-term problems.
While I enjoyed the article, I disagree that the universal objective for each company is to out-grow its part-time CFO and ultimately hire a CFO on a full-time basis. The reality is that a lot of companies may not grow to the size or complexity requisite of a full-time finance chief and the company can continue to leverage its outsourced CFO into perpetuity. We refer to this as permanent part-time CFO services.
If a business owner, entrepreneur, founder, or CEO thinks they may be able to benefit from a CFO in their business, they can take our “Do You Need a CFO” Survey here.
Ken, I agree with your take on the article. I was recently in Mexico visiting a 35 employee company. They had grown from 10 to 35 employees in the last year. They have no plans whatsoever of hiring a full-time CFO nor a full-time finance person. Their strategy for growth is to continue to focus on their core business (software systems integration), and hiring full-time employees that handle non-core but essential services is not a profitable proposition for them. I see it as a business necessity for lean businesses, not just for small businesses.
One last thing: knowing all the metrics of your company is another key to growing your company. What doesn’t get measured can’t be improved.
Cheers!
Hi Ken,
Another common mistake that a lot of small companies make is this – Overlooking the need to have a CFO. Hope to hear more from you on that topic so that I can refer some of our readers to your article.
James, we’ll keep producing content to that end. Thanks for your comment!