What is a Fractional CFO?
Let’s start with two basic questions:
What is a fractional CFO and how can a fractional CFO help a small or medium sized business?
A fractional CFO is an experienced finance professional who instead of working for just one company, divides their time among a series of client companies. The day to day work of a fractional CFO depends a lot on the specific client company they are working with – it can range from long term strategic decision making with the CEO or board of a company to providing analysis of the prior month, quarter or year results in order to foster better business decision making. Many experienced finance professionals enjoy the variety of work, companies and people that they are exposed to through fractional work. In addition, they have the opportunity to use their vast and varied experience to continue to learn at the same time, making fractional work very rewarding.
From the company’s perspective, the advantage of a fractional CFO is you only pay for what you need when you need it.
We would strongly recommend that you not flip in between several fractional CFOs, as none of them will be able to learn enough about your company to truly become a business partner. Instead, we would suggest finding the right fractional CFO in terms of fit with you and your company, and one that has the skills your company needs—then develop a relationship with them. That way, you are creating a long-term business connection and not “retraining” your fractional CFO every six months.
For our next blog, we will talk about some traits to look for in a fractional CFO and a few questions to ask to help you find the right fractional CFO for your business. If you’re interested in getting our blogs regularly, subscribe using this link. You will get general, practical, and useful information and advice based on our experience! We welcome feedback, questions and topic suggestions for future blogs, just let in the comment section below.
Having a team here at Financial Foothold that already knows the transactional level of your company’s data means we can get to work right away on the higher-level CFO analysis. If you are ready to get started, set up a free consultation here.
