High quality benefits when hiring interim Chief Financial Officer by Sam McQuade CFO of Panterra Finance
Sam McQuade on flexible Chief Financial Officer advantages for AI technology these days: Improved Investor And Board Relationships: Investors and stakeholder boards expect efficient financial management. . Having a fractional CFO on your team can help strengthen relationships with these key stakeholders and ensure they’re comfortable trusting you to provide financial transparency. Additionally, if your startup is hitting speed bumps, your CFO will find solutions and present them to the board. Expertise In Startup Fundraising: Startup fundraising can be tricky, and one of the biggest challenges startups face. But, a fractional CFO can bring the necessary expertise to make it easier. They can help you build your investor presentation, set financial goals and budgets, and identify potential investors. Read more details at Sam McQuade CFO.
Complex Budget Allocation Decision-making: High-growth companies often find themselves in the position of having to decide where cash is best spent. When evaluating whether to pursue an acquisition or change distribution channels from retail to digital, a company that does not yet have a full-time CFO can utilize a fractional one to evaluate the project and support decisions during intensive, time-sensitive sprints. Optimization of Internal Processes: Internal processes are the cohesive link between strategy, operations, and performance. A CFO is uniquely placed to understand each step’s cost and contribution and guide their optimization. CFO responsibilities include evaluating all processes and clearly understanding their financial contribution to profitability and cash flow. Doing this exercise keeps management abreast of the company’s actual performance and shareholder returns. Fractional CFOs can also build best practice processes to document these reviews to ensure ongoing continuity and time efficiency.
A fractional CFO is often brought into a company to help overcome specific financial challenges such as: Cash flow issues; Low gross margins; High expenses; Outgrown existing systems; Need to make cost cuts; Navigating an audit. Create Forward-Facing Financial Visibility: Fractional CFOs are also helpful in optimizing or implementing more forward-facing financial visibility. While many financial professionals such as bookkeepers, accountants, and controllers are tasked with keeping past and current finances organized and well-documented, a CFO focuses on the future.
Searching to hire your first CFO or wanting only some interim coverage? We offer solution CFOs for immediate short term projects and longer term engagements. Adaptable with clear pricing so you solve the needs of your business and don’t have to rush into a potentially bad solution and costly full time hire. Along with the core services of C-Suite Level Executives in Finance and a contingent of Fractional CFO talent and experienced Intermittent CFO innovators, Panterra Finance services include: international Business – Experts in Global Tax Liabilities and Cash Flow Strategies, investments and planning. Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Advisory – Providing valuations as well as independent perspectives on offers and options. Internal Audits – Independent internal auditors with in-depth reports highlighting risks and vulnerabilities. Risk Management – A worldwide footprint enables Panterra Finance to identify risks and opportunities in the new world economy. Compliance Review – Actionable understanding when entering markets with new rules, regulations, laws and international asset allocation decisions.
The CFO function is evolving at lightspeed. With digital transformation and societal changes, the CFO role is rapidly turning into one of a “Chief Fiduciary Officer”, which is going beyond the traditional financials to look towards the future and lead long term value creation in a world of many unknown risks. Storytelling is a very powerful tool to engage and energize teams about value creation and potential pitfall areas. The traditional path of CFO usually starts with a solid foundation based on technical knowledge and then after about 15 years, the great leaders earn the coveted title.
A chief financial officer (CFO) is the highest-ranking financial professional in an organization and is responsible for the fiscal health of the business. The CFO’s responsibilities include, but aren’t limited to, building a top-notch finance and accounting team, ensuring revenues and expenses stay in balance, overseeing FP&A (financial planning & analysis) functions, making recommendations on mergers and acquisitions, obtaining funding, working with department heads to analyze financial data and craft budgets, attesting to the accuracy of reports and consulting with boards of directors and the CEO on strategy.
Liquidity refers to an organization’s ability to pay off its short-term liabilities — those that will come due in less than a year — with readily accessible, or liquid, funds. Liquidity is usually expressed as a ratio or a percentage of what the company owes against what it owns. CFOs are concerned with ensuring that customer payments are made in full and on time and controlling expenses so that enough cash is on hand to meet financial obligations.
Now, suppose there is a problem with the website. Maybe the server goes down, or maybe there is a bug in the code. In such a case, the smart contract will still be functional, and the transactions will still take place. This is because the smart contract is running on the blockchain, which is a decentralized network. Even if one node in the network goes down, the other nodes will still be up and running, and the transactions will take place. This is just a very simple example to show you how a DAO works. In reality, DAOs can be much more complex, and they can do many more things. For instance, they can be used to create decentralized versions of traditional companies or organizations.
Are you looking to expand your business overseas? Our experts are able to help you at any stage. We will first start by understanding your vision and global tax and cash strategy. Once aligned, we will help execute the financial, legal, compliance and talent solution activities to build your entity and team.
A lot of our clients at Panterra Finance ask us about DAOs, what they are, and how they work. So we thought it would be helpful to write a blog post explaining them. Before getting into DAO, a brief few things about blockchain. A blockchain is a decentralized and distributed digital ledger that records transactions on many computers so that the record cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks and the collusion of the network. Sounds complicated? Let’s take an example to understand this better. Suppose there are two people, A and B, who want to transact with each other. A wants to buy a product from B worth $100. In the old way of transacting, A would hand over the $100 to B, and B would hand over the product to A. This process is called ‘centralized’ because there is one central entity, in our case, a bank or PayPal, through which both parties have to go through to complete the transaction.
A properly qualified CFO is a business professional with relevant experience within various commercial environments. This important distinction between a career CFO and the CPA is key. The CFO can solve many financial and business problems in short order, due to having had experience in such matters and the ability to quickly identify and address issues and employ best practices and techniques. Hiring a CFO to perform the financial and administrative functions of the business, frees up the business owner so they can focus on other value-enhancing aspects of the business. In addition to bringing financial and accounting expertise – a CFO can deal with most administrative areas such as human resources, facilities, insurances, legal and compliance, as well as stakeholder relations.
In these early years of creating innovations in the corporate C-Suite, Sam McQuade nurtured and created a maverick approach to new finance operations for Stryker as it broke through to the lucrative emerging markets in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)). While approaching the markets in the growing economies of Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia and Romania, Sam McQuade was recognizing the need for Interim and Fractional CFO’s for the avalanche of incubators and startup companies in these underdeveloped economies that were on the cusp of being integrated into modern International Finance systems and markets. Discover additional info on https://www.diigo.com/profile/sammcquade.