Company Background
Cloud Finance Department is the vision of the founding director, Rob Searle FCA.
Rob, based near chichester in West Sussex, is an FD with 12 years’ experience gained within dynamic entrepreneurial SME businesses across diverse sectors and disciplines.
He has a passion for working with like-minded people to drive performance improvement and unlock potential. Having worked with many owner managed businesses across his career to date, he has supported and guided senior management and particularly the owners/MDs.
As part of his role he has continually driven positive change management, developed and refined mission critical performance measurement tools, consistently improved processes all across the business, whilst constantly seeking to take advantage of the latest IT for implementations of new systems. Through these skills he has been able to bridge the gap between developing and guiding board level strategy and working alongside operational teams.
Vision
CFD has seen the value of adopting the latest technology to business.
Cloud based financial applications have created a new technology curve that enables the opportunity for the finance function of a business to be operated remotely, paperless and at a much lower cost. This enables businesses to expand and operate with the benefit of a much higher level of financial skills and information, without the need to incur increased overheads or capital investment.
Outsourced bookkeeping is not a new service, however this has generally been provided at the micro end of the SME (small and medium sized enterprise) market by smaller firms of accountants, where transaction volumes, access levels and investment are low. This is a service focused on historic bookkeeping and ensuring minimum compliance. It is also provided at the upper end mid-tier business who are perhaps part of a larger international group, by the large accountancy firms. These firms are able to invest in expensive ERP systems on Wide Area Networks where they are in a position to access economies of scale for their clients.
CFD believes that the owner managed business of SMEs (for example, companies a turnover of £5m to £20m) to date, has had limited outsourced options.
CFD uses the advances in cloud based technology to provide businesses a totally cloud based finance department. In simple terms, the entire finance function is outsourced and can be managed through a combination of remote and locally based dedicated team. The key decision makers able to access their up to date information real time, via a web portal and app.
At the entry level CFD would provide basic monthly financial reporting, but this can be tailored to include higher level, more regular and detailed reporting as the businesses requirements change including forecasting and fractional FD strategic input.
Value Proposition
SME business owners and managers are generally focused on driving their businesses forward. They will understand their product or service and will know how to market successfully.
SME business owners and managers are generally focused on driving their businesses forward. They will understand their product or service and will know how to market successfully.
What they may not be able to do well, or may not have the time, resource or desire to do, is manage an efficient and effective finance function.
Well run finance departments, with fully qualified teams come at a significant cost to businesses, and may not be an option for many SME businesses, which if they had access to would help drive the business forwards.
By using CFD, clients gain access to experts in the financial field and receive a tailored solution, based on best practice for compliance and the combined knowledge of the business managers and CFD, to add significant value to the business.
CFD fees can be fixed, tailored and offer their clients an unparalleled level of flexibility.
Using the right skills at the right time, companies are able to turn an administrative, process driven function into a value add information source.
Internal efficiencies improves through better processes, and business owners have access to and understanding of vital information