Beyond Outsourced Accounting: How “Finance as a Service” Provides Decision-Driving Insight for CEOs

Strategic finance has become the secret accelerator of high-growth companies where bets are bigger, risks are higher and the outcomes from decisions have lasting impact. But for most growing companies, finance and accounting can’t deliver the clear insight into business performance that leaders need. The wrong people, inefficient processes and outdated systems obstruct progress and stall growth.

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To respond to rapid changes, you need a clear view into financial fundamentals, forward-looking reporting and an experienced perspective of business performance metrics. While outsourced accounting simply allows you to offload non-core business activity such as AP, AR and basic reporting, Finance as a Service delivers integrated best-in-class technology as a platform, business process engineers, data analysis expertise and high- level strategic CFO guidance.

Traditional financial management options for startups and high growth companies Full of tradeoffs and uncertainties, it’s challenging to find the right solution to manage the financial needs of your business.

DO IT MYSELF “I don’t know how or have the time.”
HIRE A CFO “Too expensive.”
HIRE A CONTROLLER “Not ready for that kind of investment.”
HIRE A FRACTIONAL CFO “What if they don’t understand my business.”
CHOOSE AN OUTSOURCER “I know someone who had a bad experience.”

Read on to see how you can rethink your finance and accounting solution. There is a better way.

Financial fundamentals that connect the dots

For growing companies, it makes sense to use software designed for small business—one for
accounting, another for travel and entertainment and another for invoicing. The data is not
connected and there are multiple entry points, but it works as a short-term solution.

A more complete picture

As the company evolves, you need to be able to see the interactions and dependencies of all parts of the business. Building spreadsheets with data from multiple systems wastes time and doesn’t provide deep insight. You need to be able to see your business as a whole—past, present and future.

“We need to sync with marketing to provide real-time analysis of how marketing efforts correlate to sales/dollars received.” Consero customer

Insight through connected data

With financial information collected from across the business, presented in a unified form, you can make sense of the current challenges and opportunities ahead. Connected data that supports financial reporting will help you:

Understand your cash position, including the pace of collections.
Monitor customer acquisition costs and track ongoing account profitability.
Evaluate inventory or service line performance in real time—before it’s too late to act proactively.
Demonstrate performance gains to potential investors.

With a firm foundation of financial reporting, you can make confident decisions as you navigate the challenges and opportunities of growth.

Processes to increase efficiency, reduce fraud

While paper-based processes and functional apps can support the company in early stages, growth demands higher productivity and controls to reduce the risks of errors and fraud. When employees have to enter data into two or three different systems, they are wasting time that could be spent on profit-building activities.

Grow without growing payroll

With integrated financial management systems, you can reduce repetitive tasks and duplicate data entry. Employees can handle higher transaction volumes in the same amount of time. Consolidated data means that employees don’t have to spend so much time in spreadsheets.

Reduce opportunities for fraud

Without formal financial policies and controls to safeguard and monitor revenue and expenditure transactions, companies are open to lost revenue, over payments or even internal fraud. Moving to a consolidated financial platform and eliminating paper-based processes will improve reporting, expedite collections and reduce the opportunities for fraud.

Controls and accuracy

With integrated financial management systems and processes, your employees can focus on productive work instead of administrative tasks. Connected systems will support key checkpoints, critical performance metrics and segregation of duties to reduce unintended errors and employees who might consider taking advantage of unchecked processes.

70% of staff members surveyed felt their company would benefit from reducing the amount of time spent on administrative tasks. CFO study

Clear line-of-sight to drive decisions

When business leaders have to depend on information housed in multiple disconnected financial management systems, there is no single view of meaningful information to make decisions. Too many decisions are made on gut feelings because there simply isn’t enough time to piece together all the needed data.

“We need to focus ourselves much more on getting our product right and growing our customer base.” Consero customer

Focus on the future

As your company grows, you must have financial information that gives you a birds-eye view of the performance of the organization—as well as the ability to focus in on the details. You need to understand exactly what is happening across your business so you can make the best decisions for the future.

Execute with confidence

With strong financial management guidance, you can monitor and guide the strategic direction of the company. Accurate financial models and visualizations give the leadership team and managers the information they need to:

Recognize strategic missteps early and take corrective action.
Provide visibility into recurring revenue and other cash inflows to monitor profitability.
Identify vendors missing deadlines or simple mistakes by staff members.
Track forecasts and budgets to keep the company on course. With focused financial information, your managers can execute on their mission with confidence.

Reduce distractions to focus forward

It’s difficult to focus on the future when you have to manage the everyday administrative tasks of financial management. Business leaders who are fighting fires—trying to stay ahead of vendors, receivables, taxes and compliance—can’t spend enough time on issues that will impact the long-term success of the organization.

Prioritize growth

The health of any business depends on looking ahead to identify opportunities and be alert for warning signals. When you reduce the everyday distractions, you can spend more time working on strategic partnerships, looking for ways to drive performance and improve visibility for decision makers.

Look to experts

By strategically outsourcing financial and accounting activities, while maintaining a core team in-house, you can take a strategic approach to financial management. The key is to find professionals who have the experience to deliver financial management support with accuracy, wisdom and discretion.

Offload transactional work

By relying on shared services to offload transactional work, your business will be more efficient while increasing visibility to information. The integrated financial management systems delivered through outsourced finance and accounting provide better insight through connected data as well as the reduced burden on your team.

90% of finance executives surveyed say they need to do more with the financial and operations data at hand to help top management make critical decisions. CFO

Insights to enable growth decisions

A fundamental disconnect between the company’s goals and its financial figures are at the heart of many business failures. Without visibility into comprehensive financial information, it’s impossible to accurately monitor performance and measure progress on strategy.

“Outsourced accounting typically doesn’t get ingrained in your business, whereas Finance as a Service adds value to the business as a whole.”

Control risk during change

When you have deeper financial insight— with visibility into data and analysis tools to build understanding—it’s possible to assess risk in different scenarios. With a firm understanding of the financial position of the business, you can work with stakeholders to create opportunities, meet challenges head on and overcome the inevitable obstacles to growth.

Visibility across operations

With connected data and mature financial management guidance, your organization can mitigate risks and build for the future with:

Cash forecasting built on clear understanding of recurring revenue, receivables and outflows.
Pricing strategies that reflect fullyburdened costs.
Reporting to provide each stakeholder the information that builds confidence.
Identification of financial trends and market opportunities to better control costs and build for the future.

By providing your organization with timely insights into the company’s performance, you can help guide the company to mitigate risk and build a long-term strategy.

Finance as a Service from Consero

At Consero, we combine traditional CFO, controller and bookkeeping services with proven processes and integrated software to give executives a dashboard view of company performance, plus the ability to invoice customers and pay bills all in one place.

Delivering far more value than outsourced accounting, which often just provides glorified bookkeeping with compliance based reporting, Finance as a Service gives clients—like your organization—enterprise-level financial visibility and control at a fraction of the cost and time required to setup and manage an internal finance team and infrastructure. You also get management reporting that tells you how your business is actually performing financially. We can have you up and running in 30 days with minimal impact to your company, delivering real value including:

Connected Data: No more disparate data; we provide a financial portal with best-of -breed financial, accounting, invoicing and expense software.
Process and Controls: We implement proven processes and controls to increase efficiency and speed to market.
Right People: We combine traditional CFO, controller and bookkeeping services with proven processes and integrated software that gives executives a dashboard view of how their company is performing, as well as the ability to invoice customers and pay bills all in one place.
Saving Time: We free up your top people from dealing with time-consuming financial activities and allow them to focus on strategic goals.
Financial Visibility: With comprehensive financial reporting, you can make decisions based on a clear picture of your financial standing.
Poised for Growth: We deliver a new paradigm; a finance department that is an enabler of growth — not a constraint.

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