Chase Business Leaders Outlook Survey1 Week 6 Assignment 1

In the 2014 Chase Business Leaders Outlook Survey1, US middle market business executives have listed (1) revenue/sales growth, (2) managing labor costs, (3) cost of commodities, (4) taxes, and (5) availability of capital/credit among their top ten business challenges. While all these are considered separately, they all share a common semantic core – business finances.

With these as the top concerns, managing your finances smartly and efficiently is the surefire way to stabilize and later on, to expand your business further. What could be problematic, however, is that you should manage all aspects of your business simultaneously and it could be dangerous to just zero in on one particular aspect of your business, let alone if you were not a

In using part-time CFO consulting services, streamlined budget preparation for both cash flow and profit planning purposes could be done more efficiently and you don’t even need to lift your finger when it comes to balance sheets, with you being provided the numbers and their implications on your business.
Increasing Cash Flow
With this kind of CFO services, it would very easy to assess the financial status of a company by their quick assessment of ineffective business practices, extraneous spending, and other liabilities, so you can just focus on the next plan of action when you see the numbers during consultations. Assessment would include close budget preparation and monitoring, trend analysis, tax-saving strategies, and detailed financial reports, all of which could increase cash flow.
Helping in risk management
In another survey done by American Express2 in Australia, 45% of mid-sized companies fear that businesses are to fail in the next 3-5 years if most businesses would stick to a short-term mindset and would not prioritize future-proofing and risk management. Some CFO services are targeted on giving performance indicators, providing financial advice and informed decisions, forecasting and modeling preparation, and evaluating projects and processes both synchronically (e.g. for one month) and diachronically (e.g. over a period of 1-5 years). These would help in accurate predictions and projections to take correct and calculated business