If your business isn’t succeeding in the way that you had hoped or expected, you may be thinking about enlisting the help of a chartered accountant to give you expert advice that will get you back on track and maximise your business’ potential for growth. However, many small and medium sized businesses do not have the financial means to employ a full time chartered accountant or they simply don’t have enough work to give them to justify a full time role. This is where a Surrogate Financial Director comes in.
A Surrogate Financial Director is a professionally qualified accountant who will act as your Non-Executive Financial Director to bolster your Board of Directors. Whilst they won’t be involved in the day-to-day running of your business, they can attend board meetings to help you make better informed decisions, control all aspects of financial management, and attend meetings with customers and suppliers to give them the reassurance that you mean business.
The Benefits of A Surrogate Financial Director
They Can Improve The Face of Your Business
The perception others have of your business could be limiting your potential for growth, no matter how great your product, service or prices are. If you come across as unprofessional, disorganised or unreliable, larger and blue-chip companies will be reluctant to work with you. By hiring someone with a great deal of knowledge and expertise in business advice and communications such as one of our experts at Ryans, you can win over potential customers and clients and maintain healthy relationships with them for years to come, all whilst building your profile as a reputable company.
They Offer a Fresh Perspective
Surrogate Financial Directors can offer a fresh perspective by providing knowledge and using experience that your other directors may not have. As they are not directly involved in your business, they can also take a more objective view too, removing stress and emotions from the equation and acting as the voice of reason.
Because a Surrogate Financial Director doesn’t work full time for your business, they can also come away from the everyday pressures of your company, giving them time to reflect and offer a fresh perspective on any issues or ideas when they return.
They Can Provide Valuable Connections
You may have heard the phrase “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” before. Although we’d disagree with the first half of the phrase as knowledge is in fact power, the second half couldn’t be more true. Gaining connections in the business world is the key to success and your Surrogate Financial Director is likely to have a whole address book full of influential and skilled contacts that they can introduce you to, including suppliers, distributors or potential clients. Networking takes time and building up a contact list like that would usually take years for a small or medium sized business to do.
They Can Monitor and Keep Track of Your Objectives
Running a business usually involves a heavy workload, lots of deadlines and everyday issues that must be dealt with, which means directors can sometimes become distracted and lose track of the main business objectives. A Surrogate Financial Director has less day-to-day responsibilities and can therefore keep a close eye on the objective and keep everything in check, reducing the risk of bad habits such as getting sidetracked and missing agenda items and they can help to alleviate any tensions that may have arisen due to stress.
Why Choose Ryans?
Our clients have been benefiting from our surrogacy service since 2007. In fact, our very first surrogacy client was insolvent (with negative reserves of almost half a million pounds). But by bringing us in, the company not only recovered from insolvency, but grew its net assets to £278,000 in four years and racked up an impressive client list including Argos, Currys, Dixons, PCWorld, Littlewoods and Makro and more.
We have plenty more success stories like this. So, if a Surrogate Financial Director sounds like something that your business could benefit from, let’s chat.