Across the globe, organisations are facing unprecedented and unimagined disruption due to the coronavirus pandemic, creating a range of challenges that require immediate attention.
The coronavirus crisis is on a scale unlike anything many leaders have dealt with in their careers, and can rapidly overwhelm those used to operating in more ‘business-as-usual’ situations. Additional skills are likely to be required in order to deal with reduced supply and demand, workforce challenges, and vastly reduced income.
How best should businesses and finance leaders look to address these additional challenges? Primarily finance teams will be looking to undertake ‘business as usual’ activities such as month end and year end. However, at this time, strict cashflow management is of paramount importance and so the requirement to deliver accurate rolling 13-week cashflow forecasts has never been more crucial. In addition, there will no doubt be a change in emphasis on the activities of the finance team and this may allow the opportunity for improvement projects to be undertaken looking to drive efficiencies on current working practices.
Whilst it is possible that leadership teams already have the skills in place required to manage the situation, there may be an alternative solution to managing crisis-related projects in order to secure the short term survival and long term prosperity of the business in which you operate.
At Rutherford Cross, we regularly introduce senior finance interim executives into businesses to manage additional project workload. This approach is ideally suited to increasing the capacity and skills portfolio of an organisation’s finance team in a crisis situation.
Introducing senior finance interim professionals can assist businesses with situations such as:
- Supporting with business remodelling and cashflow/liquidity management through the engagement of Financial Controllers or Treasury Specialists
- Supporting with the statutory year end close and liaison with External Auditors through the introduction of up to date Technical Statutory Accountants
- Driving improvements and efficiencies in processes and procedures across Finance and Operations through the engagement of Audit or Systems Specialists
- Supporting with the management of changes in operations through the introduction of Commercial Finance or Project Professionals
Rutherford Cross has a network of senior interim finance professionals available to strengthen your existing team during these challenging times. We have supported a number of clients over the last few weeks of lockdown with interim candidate placements via virtual interviewing and virtual on-boarding across the Technology, Energy and Public Sectors.
If you are not looking to hire at this time but feel you could benefit from interacting with other Finance Leaders, Rutherford Cross is facilitating a number of online finance forums for our network to allow the sharing of best practice and knowledge transfer during these unprecedented times.
For a confidential discussion on how we can support your business at this time, please contact [email protected] or [email protected].
