Bolster Service Company Growth With CFO Outsourcing Services
- Paula Waggoner-Aguilar
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
CFO Outsourcing Services is a great way to bolster service company growth. Every business, including energy service companies, need a financial leader with a strategic financial plan to meet its growth ambitions. A financial leader perceives the overarching financial landscape of your organization in real-time, offering a high-level overview essential for navigating the challenges of the current year. From this elevated perspective, a CFO can scrutinize monthly financial patterns, swiftly adjust or project a 13-week cash flow, and assist in charting a strategy while providing financial insights for the year ahead.
When you're immersed in daily operations, an external viewpoint can offer fresh insights and clarity on optimal future actions. If your strategic business options are unclear, a CFO can model various scenarios to assess their financial implications. They can delve into profit and loss specifics and operational aspects to formulate revenue-enhancing recommendations.
Discover how enlisting a strategic Outsourced CFO or Fractional CFO can bolster your upstream oilfield services, midstream oil gas, downstream power gas, and renewable energy services businesses – without breaking the bank or putting a drag on your profit margins. CFO Outsourcing Services provides you with outsourced expert financial leadership on an annual service basis at a fraction of the time and cost of a full-time CFO.
CFO Outsourcing: Why hire an Outsourced CFO?
A financial expert sees the big picture of your financial situation – in real-time. The 50,000 feet altitude picture, which is what’s needed at this point in the game to get through this year. From this birds-eye view, an outsourced chief financial officer can analyze your monthly financial trends, quickly forecast or update your 13-week cash flow, and help you map out a strategy and provide financial guidance for the rest of the year.
When you are knee-deep in your own operations, someone on the outside looking in provides a new perspective and insight into your best next moves. If you are stalled in your decision-making process, a CFO can run multiple scenarios to see what the financial impact would be with each case. Or dive into P&L details and operations to generate recommendations for revenues. An outsourced CFO also offers:
Recommendations for reducing high customer concentrations risks
Opportunities your organization can take to optimize costs
Strategies to squeeze the cash conversion cycle from both ends
Assess your funding and recommend the strategies for raising capital
Not all Outsourced CFOs are the same – here’s what you need to know!
As good as this all sounds, it’s important to note that not all CFO outsourcing operate the same way. Many firms offering these services provide a one-size-fits-all-CFO-service based on specific cloud accounting systems, payroll, financial data inputs, accounting needs, and Controller Services. They are kind of like an “accounting factory” if you will.
These outsourced accounting operations generally charge a fixed price that includes an agreement on how and when the work is performed. Essentially, they aim to standardize the widgets. It’s easy to recognize because they’ll outline things such as the number of “touchpoints” or limit discussions with you to a 30- minute monthly meeting (to keep their costs low and profit high).
Companies involved in new pipe sales for pipelines, geoscience mapping data, energy software, or solar equipment product manufacturing could work under this model because their businesses are relatively commoditized. But this isn’t the case for midstream and renewable service companies, engineering and construction service firms, or developers/operators of oil and gas infrastructure where operations are more complex.
What to look for in an CFO Outsourcing Service?
If your business model doesn’t fit with the one-size-fits-all type service (which most energy companies don’t), then you should look for a service with a more customized approach.
A CFO Outsourcing Service should target finance disciplines – which is future-focused yet also build on historical accounting snapshots of your books. Putting finance and accounting together help you make decisions about the business in this dynamic and ever-changing landscape. Your Outsourced CFO can find ways to shrink the cash conversion cycle (which is critical right now) and deliver strategic financial services, including:
Strategic planning and transformation
Cash flow management and forecasting
Financial planning and budgeting
Financial reporting
Business processes and internal controls
Financial strategies and raising capital
Operational finance - provide accounting and finance guidance for service companies
Your Outsourced CFO Services should be tailored to your needs and requests
The bottom line is, your business doesn’t fit into a one-size-fits-all box. And your outsourced CFO shouldn’t attempt to put it in one. Look for a Fractional CFO company that custom tailors its services to your business in areas such as:
Industrial products and services
Sales nuances (pricing, bidding, T&M, SAAS, % completion, netbacks, royalties, oil price)
Cost activities and complexity
Man-hours (1000's of employees on construction sites, subcontractors vs. shifts/crews)
Utilization
Productivity
Procurement or supply activities
Warehousing, inventory, and field dispatching
Chemical mixing and production
Profitability
Working Capital
The Energy CFO offers a customized white-glove CFO Outsourcing Service
At The Energy CFO, our approach to Outsourced CFO Services is a win-win policy with your best interests in mind. It’s intentionally designed to wrap around your accounting service provider and/or Controller, whether they are in-house or outsourced.
Our definition of traditional in-house CFO work comes from the corporate energy finance world where our team is trained in areas such as:
Establishing corporate governance or institutionalizing the company
Advising and presenting to company boards
Corporate and Business Unit Planning
Corporate Finance adapted for private family businesses – or entrepreneurial finance
Investor Relations
Financial Planning and Analysis (including financial and economic modeling)
Management Reporting (covers financial and operational data)
Risk Management
Controllership (covers Accounting, Tax and Internal Controls)
Project Accounting, Job Costing, Oil & Gas or Energy Accounting
Operational P&L (running businesses, understanding drivers of the P&L, connecting the dots between operations and finance)
Working with us means you only pay CFO Rates for CFO work. Our CFO leadership has energy services, finance, and accounting backgrounds. Our financial services approach builds upon the work performed by your accountant (so no duplication) to assess your financial situation from a big picture, birds-eye view – and move forward.
We rely on the numbers from your accountant and its not unusual for our CFOs to meet with your accounting provider to make corporate accounting and tax recommendations to benefit your services company. If you need an accounting provider, we can provide you a list of firms we have developed relationships with through our Strategic CFO Alliances or assist you in identifying niche accounting firms that meet your needs.
We encourage you to do your research on this topic. The Energy CFO has received awards and industry recognition, including Best Outsourced CFO, and has a solid professional client reputation for providing excellent and affordable outsourced CFO services to our clients. Be sure to checkout our client success stories and our client reviews. You can also read more about how CFO Services can help improve financial decision making, strengthen and growth your business.
