The CFO'S Perspective

For many owners and executives, some of the most trying times are not when the business is in stagnation, or even decline. The difficult times often surface when a company is growing rapidly.

Aggressive growth phases test every aspect of an organization’s leadership, making growth one of the biggest challenges faced by small-to-medium sized businesses and startups.

On a growth trajectory, leadership is left wondering “How can we get the most out of existing resources?”, “Which new resources will we need to acquire?”, “How do we prioritize our needs?”, “How many new employees will we need to hire to achieve our goals?”, and “How can we get everyone bought into the growth plan?” In short, “What comes next?”

The employees in your company's office can make or break the business. They are often on the front line delivering customer service or managing critical information. Hiring highly talented and skilled individuals who will fit well into a company culture can seem almost ‘impossible’. When short staffed or during rapid growth, it may be tempting to hire almost ‘anyone’ as quickly as possible. This is usually a mistake because of the extra costs of carrying ‘dead wood’ on the payroll. The good news is that many office and administrative support occupations often require only a high school diploma with some specialized skills to qualify.

When it comes to sports teams, the coaches have a pretty solid picture of what they need for success. A baseball team needs nine players on the field, soccer eleven, and basketball five. But when it comes to the workplace, there is no hard and fast rule for determining the perfect number of roles for your team.

Whether you are a growing startup, or an established business, your company's products and services are only one part of the success equation. How you structure your organization can make the difference between long-term failure and success.

Here are some tips for planning organizational structure, how you can evaluate your current organization, and one way to make the most out of your team going forward.

The adage says, “cash is King,” and this could not ring any truer for small and mid-sized businesses. Cash is a crucial component of any successful business, especially startups and new ventures.

Cash flow is the lifeblood of organizational success.

Positive cash flow leads to profitability and provides the funds needed to reinvest in the future of the business. However, proper cash flow management is difficult for many companies to undertake successfully.

Some businesses fail to analyze cash flow projections appropriately to identify potential shortcomings, while others suffer from mismanagement of payment terms and an inability to collect outstanding payments. New businesses are prone to spend recklessly and make poor inventory choices because they lack the awareness needed to make cash flow-centric decisions. Companies struggling with cash flow management often err on several of these key elements, fueling the vicious cycle of cash flow issues.

Business executives who have problems with cash flow at their organizations (or want to avoid future issues) will benefit from earmarking these cash flow tips:

With so many variables across industries and business life stages to consider, a one-size-fits-all approach to KPIs will never succeed.

The most important metrics are those most closely related to what investors expect. For private companies this means tracking the KPIs that owners and financers need to make sound decisions. While the specifics can vary between businesses, the common thread is analyzing metrics which can inform short-term and long-term operations.

Overarching business goals such as profitability or liquidity will also influence KPI choices because KPIs can address different business objectives.

Knowing which KPIs to track is the first step towards financial awareness, but the real goal is to use that awareness to monitor the health of your business and inform intelligent business decisions. Business owners and top-level executives must understand how to use KPIs to formulate a financial analysis that is accurate, actionable, and predictive.

These KPIs should be provided by finance and/or accounting personnel to help bridge the knowledge gap at all levels of an organization. Transparency among business groups regarding key metrics is one of the most commonly recognized ways to effectively monitor business health and meet short and long-term business objectives.  

What are 'Key Performance Indicators - KPI'

Key performance indicators (KPI) are a set of quantifiable measures a company uses to gauge its performance over time. KPIs provide a way to measure how well companies, business units, projects or individuals are performing relative to their strategic and operational goals. KPIs can also compare a company's finances and performance against other businesses within its industry.

KPIs can help to reduce the complex nature of organizational performance to a small, manageable number of key indicators which are crucial to decision making and ultimately, to improving performance.

There are many, many KPI’s for every kind of organization.  The following are illustrations of some of the more common and ubiquitous metrics.

Some say that CFOs are now more important than CEOs and the financial crisis in 2008 made companies more dependent on CFOs in order to focus on accumulating cash as a brace against further turmoil similar to the credit implosion. A corporate CFO is a professional who must find ways to protect the bottom line while instilling confidence in their company's financial statements. Beyond their financial expertise, CEOs of leading companies are looking for a CFO who can help them manage the business, complement their skills, and offer leadership.