During times of economic uncertainty, companies turn to drastic measures to maintain their bottom line. Such measures include laying off staff, closing brick-and-mortar storefronts, cutting entire business lines, and downsizing office space. Operating lean during times of both economic uncertainty and prosperity is imperative for businesses to maintain their status quo (and to grow their top and bottom lines) despite external economic factors.
Outsourcing CFO and Controller duties allows company management to do what they do best, focus on the operations while trusting accounting and finance experts to optimize financial planning, manage cash flows, and provide management with the tools necessary to make highly educated, data-driven decisions.
Maintaining accounting and finance executives, managers, and their supporting staff is not sustainable for many small to medium-sized businesses. Similarly, large, established businesses pose the risk of inefficient operations by maintaining such teams in-house. The high costs of providing competitive compensation packages, employee training and education, and retention efforts leads to high fixed costs and puts a strain on a company’s working capital and ultimately its bottom line.
The aforementioned factors do not consider the opportunities for costly errors in-house teams are subjected to due to groupthink, outdated practices, and lack of industry agility. Turning to teams of financial and accounting experts equipped with top talent, industry-spanning knowledge, and robust technology provides businesses of all sizes the opportunity to operate more effectively in their aggregate.
The key factors for you to consider in outsourcing CFO and Controller duties are:
COST EFFECTIVENESS
- Reducing overhead costs is a primary benefit of outsourcing CFO and Controller duties. Without the costs associated with hiring and retaining a full-time staff in-house, capital is freed to pour into other areas of the business, leading to more efficient cash deployment.
TECHNOLOGY
- Programs and software within the accounting and finance sphere are ever-evolving to provide more security, integrations, and data analysis tools. Utilizing incorrect or outdated software can lead to costly mistakes, expensive contractual obligations, and missed revenue opportunities. Conversely, failing to utilize software to its full potential, or not understanding how to properly use it, can cause headaches within the accounting and finance functions and result in uninformed decision-making. Bad data in, bad data out.
PROCESSES
- Best practices and policy implementations provide infrastructure to accounting and finance departments. With reoccurring payroll, inventory, cash flow, and closing duties looming, outdated practices and policies pose risks that may not be easily identifiable or fixed retroactively.
ERROR AND FRAUD REDUCTION
- Overlooking errors or missing fictitious expenses is commonplace with the same sets of eyes reviewing statements month-over-month. In addition, intentional fraud, unfortunately, occurs within organizations. Outsourced teams provide unbiased reviews, ensuring an increased onus of internal controls.
TECHNICAL EXPERTISE
- Outsourced teams live and breathe accounting and finance across businesses and industries, and their breadth of knowledge and experience is consistently growing as they stay up to date on recent industry and software trends and accounting and tax regulations. Skilled professionals are imperative to navigate ever-changing conditions and to provide agility across business functions.
Outsource with Percipio Business Advisors
Outsourcing CFO and Controller duties to Percipio Business Advisors gives you confidence in your numbers and decision-making during both uncertain and prosperous times. You will free up working capital by lowering your overhead costs, allowing you to deploy that capital to grow your business.
Our advisors come from various backgrounds and financial disciplines. We are ready to help businesses of all sizes streamline their financial and accounting practices.
Schedule a consultation to get started or contact one of our experts today!
Nick Burianek, CPA
Vice President
[email protected]
531-352-4003
Ben Green
Consulting Manager
[email protected]
531-352-4006