In a healthy business, it’s important that every cost centre should be an engine of profitability and growth. Whether it’s an investment in technology, new premises, alternative supply chains or an expanding workforce, an entrepreneur must justify every expense. But it is not always possible to calculate a specific, quantifiable financial benefit for every spending decision. The question as to whether to employ a finance director is highly pertinent in this context.
While the contribution to the bottom line of your designers, programmers, marketers or sales ledger teams may be measurable, a finance director might sound like an unaffordable luxury. This is a misconception that can cost companies dearly in the long term.
A finance director could be one of the most important appointments you make. These are highly skilled professionals who will assume primary responsibility for your company’s financial strategy, reducing waste, streamlining operations, identifying growth areas and promoting diversification.
Long-Term Strategy
By taking the long view, a finance director can make accurate financial projections to guide the company away from risk and in the direction of enhanced profitability and growth. What may look attractive today may appear much less so in the longer perspective.
Efficiencies
Keeping spending under control is vital to business prosperity but it is easy to lose sight of this imperative. Inefficiencies can easily become embedded in a company culture because without a comprehensive strategic spending policy and a watchful, questioning eye, they become associated with the routine conduct of business. Being able to ask important questions is a core function of the finance director.
Communication
Although it may be inevitable for individual departments to develop into self-determining fiefdoms, particularly in a larger enterprise, a finance director can exert a powerful unifying influence, because the nature of the role will compel them to be in regular communication with every team. A finance director can make sure that every opportunity for improvement is taken, whether in pricing strategies, procurement, stock management or any other financially significant area.
Managing the Accounts and Raising Investment
A finance director can devote time to supervising your relationships with trade creditors and debtors, ensuring that terms are met, reviewed and improved wherever possible. The movement of money in and out of the business can have a major impact on the bottom line. A finance director is also an expert in determining what finance is needed and where to come by it at the best rate.
Neon Accounting provides all the services of a full-time finance director at a fraction of the cost. The key to the success of any business is getting the numbers right. Please call us today to find out more.