You need to hire a CFO to fill out a key position within your company - but do you really need a full time salary on your books?  Why not choose to hire a virtual CFO instead? They’re a great way to get the expertise you need and hiring one doesn't have many drawbacks.

Truthfully, there are a lot of benefits and reasons why you should hire a virtual CFO (chief financial officer) or hire a virtual Finance Director as they are also known. They’re a great resource of insight, expertise and they can do quite a bit for your company, especially if they have already worked alongside other successful ecommerce businesses.

Let’s take a look at exactly why you should be getting a virtual CFO for your business.

1. To Provide A Financial Strategy

One of the most valuable things that hiring a virtual CFO can do is provide you with a clear financial strategy for the future growth of your business. CFO’s have plenty of experience in designing and implementing a financial strategy, regardless of whether they are physical or virtual.

Creating a winning financial strategy is really important - they will help you with your approach to funding stock growth, appeasing investors as you scale, managing cashflow or trading across multiple tax territories. A qualified virtual CFO will help set a direction for best use of funds and navigate a course to success.

2. Smooth Transitions During High Growth Moments

During periods of high growth it's vital that you steer your ship strongly and transition smoothly from one operational structure and plan to the next. A rough transition as you scale up through those growing pains, can make it hard to retain resources, keep your best talent, keep your momentum and emerge with one eye firmly on the goals of the business.

That’s why hiring a virtual CFO - someone who can largely remain independent from the chaos - is a good way to ensure that you keep perspective on whats important in your business.

A meeting with your virtual CFO can act as your independent review point each month to help you look at what's working and what's not in your business.  This way you can smoothly transition through one growing pain to conquer the next growth mountain! 

3. Helping Shareholder Confidence

Managing Shareholder confidence is a core part of your everyday worries if you are a venture backed entrepreneur. When you are using other peoples money to grow your business, you need to make sure that shareholder confidence in you remains sky high.  That they believe you are doing a great job, that you aren't missing a trick and that you have a clear path to achieving the returns promised. 

Hiring a virtual CFO who is truly independent is a great way to demonstrate this maturity and seriousness about your commitment to your growth plans.  It helps demonstrate to your investors that you are genuinely across your numbers, and that you ARE managing it all closely for the very best returns for those shareholders. 

There's no hiding when you have a virtual CFO and that extra level of accountability will give your shareholders bucket loads of confidence that you are being held to your financial promises. 

4. Improved Decision Making

Making difficult decisions when you are scaling your business fast, is a tricky task. There is always lot to consider and business case worthy decisions to be made. Many of those decisions will rely on you having strong data and good insight into what's happening in your business. 

When you hire a virtual CFO they will not only be able to help you collate and interpret that data - they will also bring with them a lot of deep industry experience and wisdom to your business.  

Often you will find that their experience runs so deep and that their past track record has been at board level so that they are able to advise professionally on a broad range of operational issues, not just the numbers.  

They will offer up insight and genuine wisdom - they will have seen ALOT of things before!  Including staffing issues, customer acquisition challenges, product development delays, competitor moves and shareholder battles. They will understand exactly where you are at with your business growth journey and will be able to advise on the best course of action. 

So use this access wisely, make the most of all the skills your virtual CFO brings to the table. If you play your cards right, they can become a business and leadership mentor too, not just a financial advisor. 

5. Bang For Your Buck

When it comes to filling out key positions within your business, a good way to start is to hire freelance virtual positions, because they bring with them flexibility on how and when you use them and most importantly it is usually cheaper than trying to afford that level of senior expertise full time. There’s also no need for you to consider the usual employment costs or insurance costs or office space - bonus! 

A great virtual CFO will be able to parachute into your business and make in instant impact with insight, fresh thinking and experience. They will be able to help you learn how to run and grow your business and are a safe pair of hands to rely on and a sage person to share your worries with when it comes to tough decision making. 

One hour with a deeply experienced, qualified virtual CFO  each month could deliver far more value than a month of an average team member working full time in your business and very likely save you from pain and heartache of making poor decisions along your growth journey. 

Make It Happen In Your Business

Hiring a virtual CFO (or hiring a virtual Finance Director as they are also known), can lead to a step change in your business success.  They’re a key resource that can be hired externally to your business and will act as a truly independent advisor, helping you achieve your growth dreams.  You will soon wonder how you managed without one! 

Next Steps

• Access to a virtual CFO is included as part of all of our ecommerce bookkeeping and accounting service packages  - that's how important this role is to your business growth.  
• Consider if having a truly independent advisor to your business on a monthly basis would help you as you review your numbers and keep on track to your growth plans
• Discuss with investors if they would feel happier with a virtual CFO on board to monitor performance and hold you to account and to the returns promised. 
• If you would like our help and to hire a virtual CFO, contact us -  we would be delighted to talk to you about how we work with clients and how we can help you grow your business faster than you are doing now.