Speaker: Claire Viney, Corporate Services Director, Consumer Intelligence Limited
Why did you engage with a part time FD/CFO?
Claire Viney: Following a period of instability within our Finance Team and a poor experience of outsourcing our bookkeeping, we really wanted to engage with some professional support to help us re-establish our operational processes back in house, to improve our efficiency and to create an environment where the Finance Team were really partnering with the business again.
What issues or untapped opportunities were you facing before you started working with us?
Claire Viney: We were a profitable business with an enthusiastic team, but our processes had not been very effective or efficient, which had bruised our internal credibility. Engaging with Jacinta through The FD Centre has provided us with an opportunity to go back to basics and shore up our foundations. She has introduced models that are helping us streamline and improve our processes, enabling us to produce more reliable numbers now.
How has working with Jacinta helped early in the process and what excited you the most about working with Jacinta?
Claire Viney: I love Jacinta's style immediately. She was exactly who we were looking for. My background is not in finance, but I have found myself managing a Finance Team. So having the support of Jacinta, who ensured I felt informed and worked with me to realize what we were trying to achieve has been absolutely invaluable. I'm much more confident in our internal capability and I've learned a lot personally as a non-finance person Jacinta's really has given me confidence and helped work with us on what we're doing, why we're doing it and how we're doing it.
What benefits to your business are you already seeing?
Claire Viney: We now have more established and robust processes in place. We're on top of our daily cash flow and we're actually forecasting reliably forward, and we're far more confident in the value we're providing to the business and the ability we have to now work with senior management to help with their financial decisions and we feel a real sense of pride in the part that we are now playing at Consumer Intelligence.
What are you hoping to achieve over the coming 12 months with the support of your FD/CFO?
Claire Viney: We're really excited about our future and while a recession looms, we will continue to work with Jacinta and The CFO Centre to build, strengthen and future proof our business ready to respond to and take advantage of any challenges that we encounter so that we continue to thrive into the future.
