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The EFM approach to supporting businesses through difficult times

Article posted: 12/05/2021
The EFM approach to supporting businesses through difficult times

Due to the current climate, business owners across the UK and Ireland, are likely to have had to make staff cuts including reducing finance team headcount in order to keep their businesses afloat.

When you’re trying to save every ounce of cash in the business, and business volumes are under pressure, aligning people resource to the new activity level and transferring fixed costs into variable costs will help you to manage the variability and uncertainty that you will undoubtedly be facing.

Why should I choose the part-time approach?

It’s important to remember that throughout these or any difficult time, tightly managing every aspect of the business counts more than ever. Human capital is often a significant fixed cost within a business, and whilst It is unfortunate and emotionally difficult, streamlining your workforce to align to new activity levels and having a more flexible cost base is going to help preserve your business’ cash reserves.

By choosing a part-time professional financial management expert to help the business, you are paying for what you truly need when you need it, allowing you the time to focus on the core functions of the business, confident in the knowledge that critical finance activity is in expert hands. It truly can be a win–win, as your absolute cost is reduced and becomes more flexible, and a focused professional is likely to add real value to the business by saving costs elsewhere and freeing up more of your time to drive the commercials and win new revenue.

EFM’s experienced network of finance specialists are here to support your needs and relieve your financial pain points on a bespoke ad–hoc or recurring approach. With a variety of different support skills in place, from Credits Controllers all the way up to Financial Director expertise, business owners do not need to look for resource anywhere else.

A real-life example of this:

An overseas parent company entrusted EFM to run and manage their UK financial department. When we first engaged with the company, we identified a lot of problems financially and disconnect between the parent company and the UK operating centre. There was little financial leadership, the company’s books, especially receivables, were in disarray and the processes in place were not being followed or managed.

EFM were brought in and provided the entire team, comprising a Financial Controller, Credit Control and Bookkeeping resources to remedy the areas of concern, and rapidly solved the issues and bought stability to the UK finances.  Replacing the exiting FD and team, EFM were able to provide a flexible, effective and cheaper finance solution and saved the company £5k per month plus enabled them to shut the UK head office thereby generating substantial other savings.

Here’s more details around how our dedicated team offer the following financial support services to help remedy your company’s financial management challenges:

Strategic Direction

Our FDs take a proactive role in developing a company’s financial growth strategy. An EFM Finance Director will take an outside and unbiased view of your company financials and provide expert input in areas such as cashflow management, business planning, forecasting, systems & processes and management of your financial team.

As a business owner, there comes a time where you need to delegate things and focus on the parts of the business where you add the most value. Otherwise, you run the risk of being sucked back into the day-to-day, and that’s simply not the best use of your time or skills. A good FD can work alongside and help the Managing Director, the board and Shareholders to make executive decisions on all aspects of the strategic direction of the company.

Financial Control

Many businesses recognise the need for Financial Director oversight and understand the role of bookkeeping, but many growing businesses fail to apply strong financial reporting disciplines and procedures at a critical stage of their growth due to not understanding when this type of role can add value to a growing business.

Our Financial Controllers are not ‘just senior managers with accounting experience’. They have an eye for detail, managing routine and non-routine transactions, ensuring data is accurately recorded and presented, and that the client’s business has sufficient procedures and controls to effectively manage the financial risk facing the business. A good FC will take control of the finances of a company at a cost that is far cheaper than an FD.

Bookkeeping

Our bookkeepers are not just a ‘keeper of the books’ who record transactions. Our experienced bookkeepers ensure transactional posting is accurate and you record keeping meets your compliance obligations and commercial commitments.

They are key players in the smooth running of your business, ensuring financial paperwork is dealt with on a timely basis, accurate and is able to be used in useful financial data. Our team work closely and frequently with your team to understand your business more, enabling the efficiency and effectiveness of our role.

Credit Control

Our Credit Controllers are analytical professionals with strong credit management experience who improve the billing to cash collection process within a business, in order to minimise customer risk at the outset of a new relationship and release cash from sales quickly and effectively.

For many businesses, credit control is not a high priority and is even something that many fear doing for worry of upsetting customers. However, establishing the correct proactive procedures and adopting best practice solutions early on can have a significant positive effect on a company’s long-term cash flow including less reliance on external funding. This role, applied correctly, may pay for itself.

Our team adopt a strong and assertive communicative approach in which they develop positive relationships with the client’s customers and robust procedures that the client’s customers become familiar with. We can offer a flexible, scalable resource to establish and maintain the credit control function.

About EFM

EFM is a nationwide team of Portfolio Finance Professionals and Business Advisors. We help companies manage all aspects of their day-to-day financial management, so business value is maximised, and growth achieved.

Our clients are typically SME businesses or subsidiaries of overseas companies with a strong desire to achieve their goals – we are dedicated to helping them achieve that though part-time, flexible services tailored to our clients’ needs.

If you’re interested in finding out how our portfolio, nationwide team of finance professionals can help to support your business, get in touch today! Contact our central team via email or call 01582 516300.

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