AI startups benefits when hiring a interim Chief Financial Officer with Sam McQuade today: Make More Informed Business Decisions: Having a fractional CFO on your team can be incredibly helpful when making financial decisions. The amount of financial data companies require, and track can be overwhelming. Instead of getting lost in the numbers, you can focus on making data-backed decisions based on what your fractional CFO provides. They analyze current and historical data to provide transparency and definitive information. Financial projections come into play here, too. Read even more information at Sam McQuade CFO of Panterra Finance.
Complex Budget Allocation Decision-making: High-growth companies often find themselves in the position of having to decide where cash is best spent. When evaluating whether to pursue an acquisition or change distribution channels from retail to digital, a company that does not yet have a full-time CFO can utilize a fractional one to evaluate the project and support decisions during intensive, time-sensitive sprints. Optimization of Internal Processes: Internal processes are the cohesive link between strategy, operations, and performance. A CFO is uniquely placed to understand each step’s cost and contribution and guide their optimization. CFO responsibilities include evaluating all processes and clearly understanding their financial contribution to profitability and cash flow. Doing this exercise keeps management abreast of the company’s actual performance and shareholder returns. Fractional CFOs can also build best practice processes to document these reviews to ensure ongoing continuity and time efficiency.
What Does a Fractional CFO do for a Company? Fractional CFOs most commonly partner with companies to help overcome financial challenges, achieve growth, optimize strategy, implement systems, raise capital, or navigate an audit or transaction. Overcoming Specific Challenges: Fractional CFOs are often brought into an organization when there are financial challenges that the company’s existing team does not have either the skills or manpower to overcome. In many cases, a company does not have an in-house CFO. In some cases, however, the company may have an existing CFO, and the fractional CFO acts as a partner or advisor or helps lead separate projects such as raising capital or navigating an audit.
Do you want to hire your very first CFO or need interim coverage? We offer CFOs for immediate short term objectives and longer term engagements. Flexible with transparent pricing so you cover your business and don’t have to get into a potentially bad and expensive full time hire. In disrupting the traditional contracted title of CFO, Panterra Finance innovatively offers all its clients thought leadership based on international financial market experiences. Panterra Finance offers a unified international approach to businesses in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Eight centrally located offices in the USA, Switzerland, the Middle East, and the emerging African Continent, offers global enterprises Fractional and Interim CFO services backed by a team with a grasp of dynamic world trends.
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 CFO relies on the reporting generated by accounting and the financial controller to advise the CEO and board on the company’s strategic financial direction. The controller and other functional specialists report to the CFO. What informs the need for a CFO is less company size than a desire for a strategic adviser with deep financial expertise. CFOs are captains of a team that covers both accounting and finance and consists of senior leaders, such as controllers and VPs of finance, and operational staff — accountants, bookkeepers, tax specialists, data analysts. Serving as a CFO requires a background in accounting or finance and an advanced business degree, generally including an MBA. But it also takes plenty of soft skills.
Financial reports including balance sheets and P&L and cash flow statements help both internal leaders and external stakeholders understand the financial state of the business, and it’s up to the CFO to attest that these statements are accurate and complete in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). Although private companies are required to file financial reports with the SEC only if they have $10 million or more in assets and 500 or more shareholders, many businesses create these statements anyway so they’re available should the company seek a bank loan or venture capital or equity funding.
Before getting into how your business can benefit from a DAO, let’s take a look at some examples of real-life DAOs. Uniswap is a decentralized exchange built on the Ethereum blockchain. It allows users to trade tokens without the need for a centralized exchange. The Uniswap team has created a smart contract that governs the exchange. The smart contract automatically matches buyers and sellers and executes the trades. Anyone with a UNI token can participate in the governance of the Uniswap exchange.
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.
By utilizing a fractional CFO, support levels can be varied and customized to the evolving needs of the organization with the CFO’s work schedule tailored as such. Increased support can be provided at critical times reverting to a more consistent level when appropriate. A fractional CFO can bring substantially all the benefits in terms of skills and knowledge of a full- time resource, at significantly less cost. Services are provided on-site which is convenient for meetings and to perform critical work. The CFO becomes embedded and acts as part of the management team. When not on-site, the CFO can be ‘virtually’ available via modern communication tools.
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. See even more information at Sam McQuade.