Your business might have many departments, even if some departments are only a single person at the time. One of them is the finance department; that’s the business unit responsible for taking and handling all money your company deals with. This department should control both income and expenses. Additionally, they’ll make sure that your business is operating with only minimal disruptions.
Your finance department likely has the conventional roles of dealing with expenditures, income, and payroll. However, they might also deal with economic analysis that enhances your business’ key strategies.
Make Sure You Have the Right Positions Filled
Depending on the size and structure of your business, your finance department might have a number of professionals you need as part of your finance team. For a minimal finance team, make sure you have the following positions filled, when applicable:
- Finance Director: This professional has oversight and the ultimate responsibility for all financial operations.
- Finance Manager: Also known as the deputy finance director, this professional usually prepares the annual budget and helps prepare financial statements.
- Accountant: Accountants handle payroll, accounts payable, and accounts receivable.
- Finance Specialist: These professionals keep an eye on revenue analysis and the capital investment projects your business is involved with.
Get Help Getting Help
As important as the professionals in your finance department are, you might want to consider getting help in getting your help. Using expert finance & accounting recruiters can mean letting talent scouting professionals identify your specific needs and find potential solutions for your open positions. There are a number of finance department positions that they might be able to fill for you, including:
- EVP-CFO
- CFO
- Director of Finance
- Controller
- Cost Accounting Manager
- Business Analyst
Many of these positions can be filled on an interim basis to meet your short-term needs or to give candidates a trial run. Successful professionals who mesh with your organization can be invited to stay full-time or on a permanent basis.
Involving talent recruiters for finance and accounting positions has two immediate advantages you can benefit from. First, they’re likely to do this kind of work far more efficiently and effectively than you could on your own, as it’s their industry. Second, you can delegate this responsibility to them so you are free to focus entirely on your own duties.
Financial Technology
Knowing your necessary positions and filling them with the right talent is crucial to success in upgrading your financial department. However, financial technology or fintech is something else you should look into. There are many different applications and forms this can take.
Cryptocurrencies have taken hold around the world, and they don’t seem to be going anywhere. A growing number of consumers prefer to use these mediums to pay for products and services, and some companies are willing to accept them as payment themselves. One potential financial application of the underlying blockchain technology is smart contracts between multiple parties.
AI for finance is still early in its development, but pilot use cases show interesting promise. Analytics and data quality are getting better all the time, and the right AI can flag errors or outliers that respectively need correction or investigation based on anomalies outside of routine spending patterns. This can even be sorted by region, product, and vendor.
RPA stands for robotic processing automation. It can help streamline the organizational closing at the end of the year. Doing so streamlines time-consuming protocols that might have previously involved tedious manual labor and reporting.
Never underestimate the influence and power that your finance department has over the general operations and well-being of your company. They likely handle every dollar twice, once when it’s coming and again when it’s going out. Anything you can do to improve your finance department will have a positive ripple effect across your entire organization. Take a hard look at what you can do to improve your staffing, and then take an equally hard look at any technological solutions you might be able to implement. Either can do wonders, but both can be a winning combo.