What does a CFO do?
A CFO (Chief Financial Officer) is ultimately responsible for the company’s finances and thus controls how the company runs and performs financially. A CFO ensures the accounting is correct and is accountable for the company staying within the financial framework and budget. Furthermore, a CFO is responsible for the ongoing reporting of crucial figures and follow-ups, which is often a large and important task, not least in venture capital-financed growth companies, as the board and owners often demand excellent transparency.
What could be the challenges for a CFO of a growth company?
A CFO of a growth company is an essential part of the company’s success. Running growth companies often means fast decision-making, handling changing conditions, and balancing liquidity and an externally demanding environment. Situations like this place high demands on companies in general and on CFOs in particular. A growth company CFO needs to build a forward-leaning and data-driven business support from the start with a high degree of automated processes to create clarity through financial storytelling. The use of real-time data and clear dashboards facilitate. It is common for the CFO to also deal with questions concerning HR, legal, and general administration. So, even more skills and competence are often needed to prevent non-critical questions from ending up on the desk of the founder/entrepreneur unless they have a pronounced responsibility for these areas.
What are the benefits of buying CFO services?
A CFO on-demand solution creates flexibility, reduces risk, and provides the company with resources and support when and where needed. A CFO on-demand service/function can help out more or less based on your company’s status and needs, which could also vary over time. At specific periods, for example, during a financing round, the need for support can be significant and then decrease when the round is finished.
How can Cooach help you as a growth company with CFO services?
Cooach has a broad network of CFOs with extensive experience from growth companies, and we know their challenges and opportunities. Based on the customer’s needs and actual situation, we will tailormade a scope to support in the best way. Cooach can also provide experienced HR, marketing & sales experts, and legal counseling to give the smaller growth company quick access to skills and expertise usually only affordable for larger companies.
A CFO on-demand can be physically present in the client’s office when needed. Still, usually, a remote-first policy with Slack as the primary communications tool will result in maximum efficiency.
Buy services and functions
The hybrid organization opens up great opportunities and provides enormous flexibility. Today, as an entrepreneur, you probably spend a lot of time on tasks not connected to the core business and are perceived as unnecessary “admin time” instead of value creation. But you take help with individual services or even entire functions. As a company founder, you will release time, avoid fixed salary costs and reduce risk. You can get traditional business support functions within finance, HR, legal counselling and marketing & sales to the smaller start-up/ramp-up company without hiring staff with low risk and the possibility to scale up or down as needed.
Cooach’s business support platform allows you to scale up and down according to how your conditions change. The platform also offers innovative automated services and features, making repetitive tasks cost-effective. Cooach’s platform makes it easy to handle demands and needs from investors and employees, and you, as an entrepreneur, get support and relief.
The digital workplace and flexible communication tools enable easy collaboration. And even if the core competence should continue to be tightly linked to the company, business support functions – distributed among several people – can become the internal resource previously missing and give you, as an entrepreneur, support and relief to focus on building your company.
