Use Cases for Fractional CFOs and Benefits: What We’re Seeing
Fractional CFOs have been around for decades and yet they're more popular than ever. Not just CFOs though, but the ability to bring on a fractional Controller, Accountant, and/or Bookkeeper (sometimes all via one team/provider lead by a fractional CFO) has been beneficial for start-ups and businesses we've began to support and many others in recent years. If you're wondering if, when, or why you'd ever want to bring on a fractional CFO or financial horsepower, keep reading.
We've spoken to some of our fractional CFOs and financial experts across multiple industries to better understand which instances / use cases clients are calling for them to come in and support and the resulting benefits and outcomes realized. Taking the output from these discussions, and leveraging our ~20 combined years of experience to-date, we've summarized our takeaways by identifying the top three uses cases to bring in fractional CFO / experienced financial support and the high-level outcomes and benefits that can be expected:
Enhance, re-structure, and/or build operational, planning, and reporting processes and capabilities for finance and accounting to enable data-driven decision-making and effective growth and scaling.
Enable successful fundraising rounds or acquisitions by helping tell and prove the financial side of the story (i.e. preparing financial data for data rooms, supporting pitches from financial-perspective, and ensuring effective capital deployment strategies).
Grow alongside the business via different service-levels based on where the business is currently at (e.g. bookkeeping service-level to controller-service level to CFO service-level) for cost-effective scaling while fostering a long-standing relationship with a finance team that knows your team and your business.
Our team will be building solace with a fractional CFO that may start off at the bookkeeping service-level but with hopes they become the strategic finance leader we need as we scale. We highly recommend considering bringing fractional experienced finance professionals on as you build your business, and we'd be happy to help you find the right cultural, experience, and industry fit.
