Ongoing oversight to maintain high standards

The yard stick of productivity, in the absence of anything else becomes “being busy”.

We’ve all seen and heard it in the corridors of our corporate temples

“How are you going today X?”

“Busy”

The challenge in SME’s is that their Finance Manager will become busy doing things they enjoy, often to the detriment of things that are far more important. With only so many hours in a day, important things revolving around reporting, budgeting, forecasting and cashflow management fall by the wayside instead of sending cues back and forth between themselves and feeding back into the strategy of the business. If nobody else involved with the day to day running of the business has enough financial management expertise to question this, it will go un-noticed.

That is until you run out of cash.

But by then it’s often too late to change strategic direction or do anything about it. Just as there isn’t much you can do if the master of your ship steers you up onto the rocks.

I know numerous insolvency experts, who get called in at this point. But they can’t perform miracles. They can’t breath life into something that died before it arrived at the hospital and so their role often takes the shape of being the undertaker and performing the last rights.

And whilst insolvency experts are red-hot, razor sharp accountants(and really nice people) it just doesn’t make sense to have one as an ongoing member of your team. (Who do you know with an in-house insolvency expert? None of your customers I hope)

The Profit Metrics method is to anticipate, evaluate and navigate. It enables owners to get out in front of their business, be strategic and boost their bottom line.

 

‘Profit Metrics’ is a 3-step program that embeds reliability and predictability into business finances and gives owners peace of mind.

Stage 3 of Profit Metrics is ‘Staying Fixed’. This is done by a highly qualified, capable and industry experienced Virtual CFO, who reviews everything and hold the finance team accountable for maintaining best practice. We make sure the numbers are reliable and predictable and that things don’t revert to chaos. We then act in an advisory board member capacity to interpret and explain the budget, results, forecast, cashflow plan and give feedback on how the strategy is playing out.

David Dillon is a Fellow of CPA and CA, has an MBA and over 30 years of corporate experience. He has been the Managing Director of Custodian Backoffice, a specialist Virtual CFO business since 2014. He is also President of the Virtual CFO Association + Author of “3-Levers” https://mailchi.mp/1453761b50c9/cfy6cguw3u “Profit Metrics” and e-book “So, you want to be a Virtual CFO” https://vcfoassociation.com.au/so-you-want-to-be-a-virtual-cfo/

If you want any more information about Profit Metrics, click here