Uncategorized Archives - Le CFO Centre

N’appelez pas ça votre rêve, mais plutôt votre plan

Published: July 14, 2021 by bethfarnham

Voir la vie à travers un objectif grand angle

L’un des défis les plus difficiles pour les propriétaires de PME est de pouvoir prendre du recul, regarder leur entreprise à travers un objectif grand angle, et évaluer ce qu’ils ont vraiment.

Bien souvent, les distractions et les diversions quotidiennes qui accompagnent inévitablement la gestion d’une entreprise à succès – surtout lors d’une pandémie qui déstabilise le monde entier – empêchent une évaluation objective et raisonnable, ainsi que la prise de décisions stratégiques. Essentiellement, cela peut vouloir dire que certaines opportunités très importantes de croissance et de développement se retrouvent, dans le meilleur des cas, inexploitées et, au pire, passent complètement inaperçues.

C’est là que le rôle du Chef de la direction financière devient indispensable. Et là aussi que les avantages spécifiques à l’utilisation d’un CFO à temps partiel (et souvent virtuel) deviennent évidents.

Permettez-vous de rêver…

Qu’est-ce que votre CFO fait pour vous, propriétaire de PME ? Il ou elle s’assurera sans doute que tout le monde reçoive le salaire adéquat au moment prévu; règlera vos rapports internes, la conformité et la planification fiscales, et s’occupera probablement de vos relations avec votre banque.

Bien que tout cela (accompagné de quelques autres petites choses ici ou là) soit probablement suffisant pour garder une entreprise en marche, cela ne constitue pas une plateforme sur laquelle baser une stratégie de croissance solide.

Bien entendu, les choses sont encore pires si vous n’avez pas de CFO dans votre équipe. Quels que soient vos activités et votre talent particulier, il est presque certain que vous ne vous êtes pas lancé(e) dans les affaires pour passer votre temps à faire des prévisions de flux de trésorerie ou pour vous occuper des impôts ! Le rêve n’existe pas pour vous – en fait, vous vous réveillez probablement à 3 heures du matin avec des sueurs froides.

Un CFO du Centre CFO peut vous aider à réaliser vos rêves

Lorsque vous avez lancé votre entreprise, vous vous êtes certainement permis(e) de rêver – tout entrepreneur à succès nécessite une bonne dose d’ambition. Mais, comme nous l’avons constaté trop souvent, ces aspirations s’enlisent dans les soucis quotidiens de maintenir une entreprise à flot.

L’équipe du Centre CFO fournit une expertise de CFO de très haut calibre – le meilleur talent sur le marché. Ce sont des gens qui connaissent leur métier – tout ce qui concerne les finances opérationnelles qui font tourner l’entreprise, et les finances stratégiques qui donnent vie au rêve.

Dans de nombreux cas, ils peuvent puiser dans leur propre réussite commerciale pour guider les autres.

Un CFO du Centre CFO vous aidera à décoder votre rêve et à le transformer en plan, et sera celui ou celle qui vous soutiendra pour le réaliser. Il ou elle vous dévoilera la cible en vous aidant à l’aborder sous un angle différent. Les grands CFO sont des agents catalyseurs et peuvent vous aider à rompre le schéma de croissance linéaire, et à obtenir ainsi ce que vous désirez vraiment de façon plus rapide. Et ça, c’est essentiel pour que votre rêve puisse encore devenir réalité.

Le parcours de l’entrepreneur » du Centre CFO : notre « sauce secrète

Tous les CFO du Centre CFO opèrent dans un environnement qui fournit une expertise et un soutien complets. The CFO Centre possède un réseau mondial – un moteur d’intelligence collective – de plus de 700 individus, dont chacun a connu la réussite en tant que CFO, et souvent en tant que directeur général eux-mêmes. De plus, eux seuls sont en mesure d’accéder au potentiel illimité que votre modèle d’entreprise renferme, et de le déployer. Et ils se parlent entre eux, partage leur expertise, leurs expériences, et leurs contacts.

En bref, un CFO du Centre CFO guidera l’entrepreneur lors d’un parcours en trois étapes afin de l’éclairer sur ce qu’il désire vraiment pour son entreprise. Pour l’emmener d’où il est maintenant vers là où il veut être.

Et pour être plus précis : « là où il veut être » est le choix individuel de l’entrepreneur. Cela pourrait impliquer de se développer de façon significative; cela pourrait vouloir dire de lancer de nouveaux produits sur de nouveaux marchés à l’échelle mondiale; ou peut-être d’accélérer la cadence pour préparer votre sortie. Quelle que soit la manière de procéder, ce qui importe est invariablement de faire de ce rêve une réalité en refaçonnant le plan et en s’assurant de sa mise en pratique.

La première étape du parcours concerne le processus pour atteindre l’excellence opérationnelle. En d’autres mots, permettre à une organisation de faire ce qu’elle fait le mieux, de la meilleure façon possible.

La deuxième étape, l’opportunité stratégique, concerne la préparation du tremplin. C’est à cette étape que se forge la stratégie pour atteindre ces rêves. Il s’agit peut-être d’accéder à de nouveaux marchés; en évaluant les risques, en obtenant de nouveaux financements. Peu importe la stratégie, elle se base sur une expérience solide et, oui, sur cette « sauce secrète » qui marie la logique à un peu de magie et beaucoup de savoir-faire.

La troisième étape, la performance qui change la donne, est simplement ce qui se produit lorsque les étapes un et deux sont complétées.

Le rêve se réalise en développant une feuille de route concise, basée sur ce que l’entrepreneur veut accomplir. Le rôle du CFO du Centre CFO est d’identifier et de débloquer ce potentiel – délivrant ainsi le rêve et le transformant en réalité.

Voler comme un oiseau

Bien entendu, cela ne suggère pas que la réussite vient facilement. Les défis auxquels les entreprises font face sont souvent compliqués et risqués. C’est une des raisons pour lesquelles le potentiel n’est pas toujours exploité; et pour lesquelles de nombreux entrepreneurs finissent par travailler de longues heures sur des tâches banales.

Par conséquent, l’une des premières conversations qu’un CFO du Centre CFO aura avec un client, servira à comprendre ce qui l’a motivé à créer une entreprise, et ce qu’il veut réaliser. Ce qui est vraiment important à ses yeux. Il y a des chiffres, beaucoup de chiffres, dans la vie d’un CFO, mais l’essentiel, c’est l’identification et la compréhension des chiffres qui importent vraiment dans la vie du client.

Un CFO du Centre CFO vise à débloquer ce potentiel et à donner des ailes au rêve.

How to Scale Your Business for Growth

Published: June 7, 2021 by charlottenoble

Scaling your business depends on two factors: your company’s capability and its capacity to deal with growth.

To scale up your business, your company must be capable of dealing with a growing amount of work or sales and of doing it cost-effectively.

You need to know that your company can achieve exponential growth without costs rising as a result. It’s vital too, that performance doesn’t suffer as your company scales up.

You also need to be sure that your business systems, employees, and infrastructure can accommodate growth. For instance, if you get a sudden surge in orders, will your company be able to cope? Will you be still able to manufacture and deliver products or services on time? Do you have enough employees to deal with a surge in work or sales?

Scaling a business requires careful planning and some funding. To be successful, you’ll need to have the right systems, processes, technology, staff, finance, and even partners in place.

Identify process gaps

Audit your business processes (core processes, support processes, and management processes) to find their strengths and weaknesses. Find the process gaps and address them before you start to scale up.

Keep the processes simple and straightforward. Complex processes slow things down and hinder progress.

Boost sales

Decide what your company needs to do to increase sales. How many new customers will you need to meet your scaled-up goals?

Create a sales growth forecast that details the number of new clients you need, the orders, and the revenue you want to generate.

Examine your existing sales structure and decide if it can generate more sales. Can you increase your flow of leads? Do you need to offer different products or services? Is there an untapped market? Do you have a marketing system to track and manage leads? Is your sales team capable of following up and closing more leads?

Make sure you have enough staff to cope with an increase in sales. If you don’t have enough staff, consider hiring new employees, outsourcing tasks, or finding partners that may be able to handle functions more efficiently than your company.

Forecast costs

Once you’ve done the sales growth forecast, create an expense forecast that includes the new technology, employees, infrastructure and systems you’ll need to be able to handle the new sales orders. The more detailed your cost estimates, the more realistic your plan will be.

Get funding

If you need to hire more staff, install new technology, add facilities or equipment, and create new reporting systems, you’ll need funds. Consider how you will fund the company’s growth.

Make delighting customers a priority

To reach your sales forecasts, your company will need loyal customers. You’ll win their loyalty by delivering outstanding products or services and customer service every time you interact with them.

Invest in technology

Invest in technology that will automate tasks. Automation will bring costs down and make production more efficient.

Ensure that your systems are integrated and work smoothly together.

Ask for help

Don’t be afraid to ask for help from experts who have experience in scaling up companies. In an interview, Apple’s co-founder, Steve Jobs, said, “I’ve never found anybody who didn’t want to help me when I’ve asked them for help.

“I’ve never found anyone who’s said no or hung up the phone when I called – I just asked.

“Most people never pick up the phone and call; most people never ask. And that’s what separates, sometimes, the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. You gotta act. And you’ve gotta be willing to fail; you gotta be ready to crash and burn, with people on the phone, with starting a company, with whatever. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

Find out more.

External Funding Options for Your Growing Business

Published: June 7, 2021 by charlottenoble

Your Guide to Business Financing

Getting external financing to fund your company’s growth will depend on your plans, how willing you are to give away a stake, and, therefore, control in the business, your eligibility, and the short-term or long-term funding you need.

How to finance your business growth

Bank finance

Banks can offer you:

Unsecured business loans. These will have fixed repayments (including interest) over a set time frame. The amount and the interest rates will depend on the bank and your circumstances.
Secured business loans. To obtain a business equity loan, you’ll need to offer your company collateral or assets as security (for example, property, inventory, or equipment). The amount you can borrow will depend on the value of the assets.
Buy-to-let loans and commercial mortgages. These are suitable if you’re looking to buy or remortgage business premises.
These are more suitable for short-term financial support when your company has a cash shortfall.
Business credit cards. Again, these are probably best for short-term support.
Invoice finance. It will mean you can access cash that is otherwise tied up in outstanding invoices. It’s ideal if your company offers long payment terms to customers or if you need to grab growth opportunities.
Asset finance. This allows you to make small regular payments for an asset rather than a large, one-off payment. It is ideal If you want to preserve your working capital and generate income from an asset as you pay for it.

Angel investors and venture capitalists

If you’re willing to offer a share of your company or equity, you could approach third party investors such as angel investors or venture capitalists (VCs).

You might not have to repay their investment, but the share they will want in return is likely to be high.

Alternative investment markets

You could also consider alternative finance options. These include crowdfunding and peer-to-peer funding.

Crowdfunding. In return for early access to your products/services, discounts, or an equity stake in your company, you can raise the money you need from a crowd of small investors.
Peer-to-peer lending. You can borrow from individual small investors. If your application is successful, you’ll probably be able to borrow more than you would through a bank and access the funds quicker.

The criteria for the loan might not be as stringent as a bank, but the costs might be similar.

Is your company eligible for funding?

Banks and investors often use what’s known as the CAMPARI method to decide if your company is eligible for funding. That is:

C This incorporates everything from your professionalism and brand reputation to your company’s record in repaying loans.
A This is about you and your team’s knowledge and expertise and how successful you’re likely to be to generate growth from the financing that investors are being asked to provide.
M This is about how well your business is equipped to meet your growth plans. Investors will want to see your Return on Equity (ROE), growth projections, your competitive advantage, detailed financial reports, performance record, and a comprehensive expenditure report.
P Investors will want to know how you will use the funds and how they will help to boost the company’s financial situation or generate a profit.

For example, if you have no liquidity in the business but need it to fulfil an order or if you need a type of machinery to be able to increase your product or service range.

A This is about showing investors how you came to decide on the level of funding you’re applying for.
R Investors need to be convinced you can afford any repayments. They’ll look in particular at your cash flow and profit margins.
I This is all about showing investors you have a fallback position if things go wrong. They’ll need to be convinced you have another source of repayment should you need it.

Get expert help

To make it more likely your company is considered eligible for funding, it is advisable to get expert help.

For example, the FD Centre has part-time FDs with experience in approaching banks and major financial institutions, angel investors, VCs, and alternative lending markets for funding on behalf of their clients.

We can help and guide you through every step of the funding preparation and application process.

Find out more.

Free Emergency Scenario Planning Consultations

Published: April 8, 2020 by

In the light of events over the past weeks, we are very conscious of the heightened levels of concern facing businesses at the moment. The CFO Centre is also an SME and it’s very much a time where we are all in this together.

The purpose in writing was to let you know that we are here to help and have set aside some time to talk to companies in need of urgent advice, on a pro bono basis. We are very well positioned to help and would like to give something back.

As it stands today, the greatest concern for SMEs is cash/liquidity. As Chief Financial Officers, navigating these issues is what we do. Admittedly this is a particularly unusual situation, but there are measures you can take to put yourself into the strongest possible position for the weeks and months ahead – and fast action will of course pay dividends.

Even if it’s just to have a 3^rd party perspective and potentially put forward some options you may not have known were available, we’d love to help if we can.

If you know someone who would value a conversation to review their current situation and look at their options to increase liquidity and mitigate risk, please contact us on 1-800-918-1906 or at [email protected] so that we can set up a video conference call to review with one of our virtual CFOs.

Is your business idea disruptive enough?

Published: July 31, 2018 by

Maybe you see ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft as arrogant bullies. Or, to you, they’re a breath of fresh air in a world held victim by over-regulated dinosaurs.

But whatever your view, you can’t deny that ride-hailing upended an entire industry. Some taxi companies have tried to compete with the upstarts through rideshare-like mobile apps allowing customers to choose vehicle options, pre-book rides, and pay by smartphone.

Why have ride-sharing services succeeded against well-entrenched opposition? They’re a new idea – but more importantly, they offer real benefits over the traditional taxicab. In short, they’re disruptive.

As we’ll see later, just being disruptive isn’t enough on its own, but it’s an essential part of success.

Disrupt your way to a better customer experience

To see how being “disruptive” works, consider one of the world’s oldest skills – what some parts of the world call “joinery” and others “cabinetry.” It’s about making furniture, cabinets for kitchens and bathrooms, and other fine woodwork. It’s a slow, meticulous process in which skilled people use tools that have changed little in centuries.

That is until someone crashed into this tradition-bound environment with a radical new approach to the business. As entrepreneur Alex Craster recounts in The CFO Centre’s book “Scale Up”, he’d already helped disrupt one industry – travel agencies, with the then-new idea of people booking their own travel online.

Craster talks of how he’d been pulled into managing his father’s failing joinery business. But he came to see opportunities for the firm to provide better services and meet new needs. He started using suppliers in Eastern Europe who were able to do highly skilled work at a fraction of the cost of UK suppliers. He also switched the focus of the firm, from making products into providing solutions to customer problems.

The result has been spectacular growth and even an invitation to supply services to Buckingham Palace.

Why is disruption like this such an important part of business success today? It has to do with two concepts – something that’s new, and something that’s better.

Grab the attention of people you want to attract

Let’s start with “new.”

One well-made kitchen cabinet is pretty much like any other well-made kitchen cabinet. In some ways, cabinetry is a commodity – it’s hard for a customer to tell one company’s offering from another’s. So it becomes a race to the bottom regarding prices.

To catch the attention of potential customers, Alex Craster’s company had to offer something that was new to the market – providing a service in which company representatives sat down with potential customers to get an idea of their problems. That might involve a hotel that wanted to attract a higher level of clientele. This approach made the company newsworthy, so it gained more word-of-mouth publicity.

The company’s approach made it more attractive to the traditional media. But it also had the potential to attract what is becoming a more important kind of attention, from social media including bloggers and Instagrammers.

This meant that just having a new approach put the company’s name in front of potential customers.

Holding the attention of prospective customers

Once you have the attention of the people you want to attract, how do you hold them? By offering something they will value – something that’s not just new, but demonstrably better than what they have now.

Alex Craster’s approach, which included a consultation and understanding customers’ business objectives, was a big step towards helping a hotel meet its goals. Those may have included being able to charge a higher room rate and improving the hotel’s all-important RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room) metric.

So too, you need to be sure that your business idea offers real benefit to the people you want to serve.

Start by understanding their situation – some of the most pressing problems they are facing. That matters, because unless you can present them with a solution to one of their most pressing problems, or a step towards a solution, they’re not going to pay attention.

Then, instead of choosing a service or product to offer, you choose a problem to work on – such as increasing a hotel’s RevPAR.

Your approach must then revolve around solving that problem, with your product or service being part of that solution. If you’re offering something that is distinctly better than the solutions your prospective customers have on hand, you’ll have a much greater chance of success.

Planning is essential

All of this – finding something new and better – doesn’t just happen. You need to think it through. It takes time to match the assets you have – your skills, the skills of the people you work with, experience, and other factors – to the needs of potential customers.

A big part of that is the financial resources you have access to. With a good understanding of your financial picture, you can understand your financial strengths and limitations, so you know how much you can spend and still pay your rent and your staff.

Many growing companies find that the best way to make sure they have the financial resources they need is through a skilled finance professional – a Chief Financial Officer – who can help them understand their financial picture, and if necessary, get access to other financing that can help to seize on the opportunities to grow in a “disruptive” way.

For many companies, their best option is to have an experienced CFO available to them, on a long-term basis, but without the need to pay the compensation that a full-time professional would expect. By utilizing a part-time CFO, they have the skill set they need available to them, but in a much more cost-effective manner.

To make sure you’re being disruptive within your market, planning is key. Failing to plan is like planning to fail. To learn more about how you can take your business to the next level, please download our e-book, “Business planning & strategy implementation,” which will walk you through the steps involved in business planning.