Strategic CFO Alliances
Collaborating with Professional Firms
Finance | Accounting | Tax | Executive Search
We all Play in One Big Sandbox and There is An Abundance of Opportunities for All Of Us.
Collaboration is part of The Energy CFO's DNA. We earn our living collaborating with our clients, their staff, independent contractors, bookkeeping and CPA firms, recruiters, and other outsourced business process service providers. For us, if we believe we can provide better client service by working as one with competitors, we do so. Hence the origin of our CFO Coopetition Services.
Co-opetition is not new a new concept. We see it quite often in the industries we serve like life sciences, healthcare, SaaS and B2B technologies, oil and gas, energy infrastructure, and manufacturing. Early-stage firms use this approach to develop disruptive technologies. The way they see it, collaborating with other businesses is simply part of our strategic offense in staying ahead. There are also many companies in mature industries that have successfully been applying this approach to business for decades. Take oil and gas for example. They farm-out or share risks with other oil and gas operators to explore, develop, produce, and market their product. It is actually quite common for their partners to be direct competitors or even national oil companies. Add to that, The Energy CFO is headquartered in a military city (San Antonio, TX) so we see firsthand the joint military and civilian collaborations going on in health and biosciences.
Strategic Alliances with CPA Firms
Our CFO firm business model is unique among our peers. We focus on the strategic, planning, and finance lanes. Our CFO Services are designed to wrap around monthly client accounting services or CAS. We believe this makes us an ideal collaboration partner for cloud-based CPA firms providing outsourced controller services.
Most of our clients either have their own accounting staff, use outsourced cloud-based Accounting Service Providers, or hire us to help them making a decision to outsource or hire. Our Fractional CFO Services are designed to wrap around our client's accounting and tax service providers.
For early-stage ventures (not just startups but also very large energy "Pre-Revenue" projects), we generally bring in CPA firms providing Client Accounting Services ("CAS") a.k.a. Business Process Outsourcing ("BPO") or a.k.a. Finance and Accounting Outsourcing ("FAO") who provide bookkeeping, invoicing and bill pay (A/R & A/P), monthly accounting, preparing financial statements, state and local tax compliance, payroll, and other controller-level services. For us, CPA Firms are ideal alliance partners for our Vertical CFO Solution Services because many of our startup clients are raising capital from private equity or via project finance (so a higher level assurance is required). Everyone has a vested interest in the quality of our client's financials as we will incorporate this financial data into complex financial models, valuations, and unaudited proformas. The financial metrics from these models are presented in client pitch decks and other management presentation materials.
Our business model also uniquely positions us to offer complimentary and non-standard CFO services to CPA firms without conflict, the economic drag or headcount, and provide immense value to the clients. Its a WIN for everyone.
Temporary CFO Services
For Executive Search Recruiting Firms
We recognize how competitive the executive search business is. It takes a lot of time and money to identify, develop relationships, build resources and networks to locate the "Right Fit" for clients. More and more C-Suite searches are contingent (as versus retained searches) and it is not uncommon to have 5 to 10 individuals and/or firms working on the same search. Larger professional staffing and talent acquisition firms may have permanent interim resources on hand to provide Temporary CFO Services, however, clients in technical industries generally prefer CFO industry specialists (especially in energy).
We want to help you "move to the front of the line" in capturing these contingent CFO searches. We offer a Temporary CFO Solution to assist independent executive search firms in capturing and converting these opportunities into positive cash flow engagements fast. These short term CFO arrangements can be a win for your firm, your client, and our firm. Better yet, we offer a couple of advantages as a result of our unique business model and consultant profiles:
1) We only offer retained search services to our firm's existing clients.
2) Our CFOs are business owners. They choose to work permanently as CFO Advisors and are not seeking jobs. So this lowers the risk of any potential conflicts.
So, why not counter HR's initial call about the search with an interim service component? Our firm can partner with your firm (based on our CFO availability) to provide you/your client CFO service while you complete your permanent search, buying you the time you need to find the right fit, providing you with additional insight to assist you in your search, and then we quickly transition the reins to the new permanent CFO. This arrangement is handled on a corporate to corporate basis (our CFOs remain on our payroll). The new CFO can keep the firm on retainer for a month or two following transition for Q&A and/or temporary bench strength. Your client is happy because they have someone helping them and committed to helping transition the new CFO. Your client is also going to tell their friends about this unique offering you have. Better yet, we help you effectively monetize your relationship and accelerate the payback on your efforts.
What's in it for us? We make a living offering customized CFO Advisory and Consulting Services on a fractional and part-time basis.