Sam McQuade CFO talking about flexible Chief Financial Officer benefits these days: 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.
Looking to hire your very first CFO or need interim coverage? We offer solution CFOs for immediate short term projects and longer term engagements. Flexible with fair pricing so you solve the needs of your business and don’t have to get into a potentially bad solution and expensive full time hire. Sam McQuade CFO has successfully scaled his decades old ideas into an innovative full-service Financial Partner Solution for incubators, startups, emerging business concepts as well as well-established international companies, corporations and organizations with the introduction of Panterra Finance. The Panterra Finance professional executive team members are equipped to provide an industry leading concept of an on demand Fractional CFO and Interim CFO during pivotal transitions. Read more info on Sam McQuade.
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.
The chief financial officer (CFOs) holds the top financial position in an organization. They are responsible for tracking cash flow and financial planning and analyzing the company’s financial strengths and weaknesses and proposing strategic directions. CFOs are accountable to both the organization and various regulatory entities and authorities, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in publicly held companies. They are well-versed in both generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and state and federal regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
The key duties of the CFO position vary depending on the size of the organization, its industry and whether it’s a public or private company but generally fall into three broad functional areas: controller, treasury and strategy and forecasting. Organizations may have professionals overseeing some or all of these roles and reporting to the CFO. Controllers run day-to-day accounting and financial operations and often hold a CPA or MBA. They are responsible for creating reports that provide insights into a company’s financial standing, including accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory and payroll.
To make you understand it in simple words, let me explain it with an example. Suppose there is a website that allows people to buy and sell products. This website has a smart contract that governs how the transactions will take place. When someone wants to buy a product, they will send a request to the smart contract. The smart contract will then check if the person has enough money to buy the product. If they do, then the transaction will take place, and the product will be sent to the buyer. If the person doesn’t have enough money, then the transaction will not take place.
Selling your business or looking to buy others? Our experts can lead the deal and make sure that you have a thoughtful ownership transition. We are happy to provide second opinions on valuations as well so you have another perspective and feel better before your close the deal.
Understanding DAO: Now, suppose the same transaction happens on a decentralized network like the Bitcoin network. There is no central entity here. Both parties can interact with each other directly. The product is transferred from A to B, and $100 is transferred from B to A. This transaction is then recorded on a digital ledger which is available to everyone in the network. So there is complete transparency, and everyone knows that the transaction has taken place. This process of recording transactions on a digital ledger is what we call ‘blockchain technology.’ This is not limited to just financial transactions; it can be used to record any kind of transaction. Now that we know what blockchain is, let’s get back to DAO.
To summarize, a fractional CFO brings all the benefits of a full-time resource, but at a fraction the cost. They work an agreed upon amount of time, and on an ongoing basis. The benefits are myriad, and range from improved reporting and decision-making, clearer insight into the business for planning and forecasting, and stronger financial management and controls. Perhaps the biggest benefit however, is how the CEO can transfer the financial and administrative burden to the CFO, and thus free themselves to work on other critical aspects of the business.
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. Read more details on Sam McQuade.