Fractional CFO Consulting
It’s challenging enough to win bids and keep projects on-track and on-budget without spending extra time tracking costs and analyzing labor and overhead percentages. Add in a different supply chain challenge nearly every day and you may feel like you’re just working to stay in business. It’s difficult to set goals and objectives for your construction firm with these circumstances, and they’re the ones the industry faces every day. Larger firms can afford dedicated controllers and chief financial officers with mid-six-figure salaries and up. Fortunately, there is a way you can get the benefit of a highly-compensated and experienced CFO: a fractional or part-time CFO.
CFOs Offer Expert Guidance to Owners/CEOs
We don’t usually expect general contractors to know every nuance of financial planning, projections, and risk analysis. Those are the job of a Chief Financial Officer, and they’re just part of the knowledge and skill a fractional CFO can bring to your construction company.
Here are a few of the areas where a part-time or fractional CFO can offer expert guidance:
- Identifying KPIs and setting up ways to measure them – per-project and on the part of your business as a whole.
- Benchmarking and comparisons – letting you know reasonable benchmarks are for your labor, material, administrative, and other costs.
- Financial health assessments – reviewing your company’s financial health and making recommendations for the future.
- Stress tests – letting you know whether you have sufficient capital to grow or need more in order to achieve your goals.
- Advising on growth and opportunities – offering a financial perspective to help you plan future opportunities and directions.
A Fractional CFO Can Coach and Train Your Financial Staff
Your financial staff is hardworking and conscientious, but they may not have the background or experience to know the most efficient ways to accomplish their tasks, from billing to preparing bid documents.
Fractional CFOs can meet with your finance staff, analyze their work processes and your accounting systems, and make recommendations for ways to save time, money, and improve procedures. Improving efficiency will automatically contribute to your firm’s bottom line. How much? The fractional CFO can work with your staff to determine the amount of profit you can make by improving procedures and streamlining processes.
Get the Benefit of Experienced C-Suite Financial Management
Fractional CFOs have experience working with a number of different businesses. They can bring this experience to benefit your construction firm on an as-needed basis. You can interact with a fractional CFO on a weekly or monthly schedule, depending on your business needs. They can work with you and your staff to determine where your company is financially, and set a course for its future growth and profitability. A few of the ways a fractional CFO can offer management-level, expert guidance to your team include:
- Meeting weekly or monthly with you and your leadership team to determine goals, objectives, and progress
- Setting action plans, creating timelines, and confirming commitments
- Meeting one-on-one with you about financial goals and objectives
- Interacting with outside organizations, including banks, investors, brokers, and others
- Analyzing your technology and making recommendations for optimal results
- Providing reports and dashboards that you and staff can understand
A Fractional CFO Can Help You Overcome Challenges
Are you concerned about billing and receiving timely payments? Or, do you need help analyzing your capital requirements and obtaining additional funding? Do you have vendors that you would like to consolidate, or that have terms you’d like to renegotiate? These are all challenges that a fractional CFO can help your company to overcome.
Most of all, a fractional CFO can give your company the benefits that larger companies with full-time CFOs enjoy. You might even receive more benefits, because instead of having experience with only one business, a fractional CFO can take “lessons learned” from a variety of different businesses and experiences. Fractional CFOs are experienced, flexible, and will be able to work with you to achieve your goals in a timely, efficient, and cost-effective way.
Find Out How a Fractional CFO can Help You with Our Free Financial Health Assessment
