Speaker: Giles Guy Robertson, CFO: Tom Green
What would you like to say to your FD/CFO?
Giles Guy Robertson: I just want to say thank you to Mr Tom Green from The CFO Centre. He has been a massive help throughout 2021 to us at R&M Consultancy. So thank you Tom. Thank you to all the guys at The CFO Centre. It's really proved a massive benefit to us here at R&M Consultancy. Thanks again.
What untapped opportunities were you facing before we started working with you?
Giles Guy Robertson: We saw a great opportunity to fill a gap with litigation funders using technological services and developing those and making it less human dependent. However, we had a problem, how to manage that expansion, control the budgets and really sort of bridge that gap. Now, we being a business, you can be overstretched in terms of resources, particularly at board level. And having an FD in place, even on a temporary, fractional basis, has allowed us to bridge that gap and make a massive growth in terms of our income, revenue and profit and also our credibility within the industry. So, the FD Centre has really gone above and beyond supplying us with Tom Green.
What have been the benefits to the business specifically?
Giles Guy Robertson: One aspect the FD brought to our business was developing an autonomous finance team. That meant the other directors and operational staff could step away and actually do the job that they were planning to do with some reassurance and confidence, knowing that that's our business. The money was being taken care of and being taken care of properly. It proved invaluable ability for us to free up resources.
What have the benefits been to you personally?
Giles Guy Robertson: For us and for me personally it's allowed us to scale up and scale up with confidence, take a bigger leap forward, which is really sort of played out in every aspect of our lives, knowing that there is a person with some strong financial accountability and control within our organisation. It's given us a lot more reassurance, a lot more peaceful nights' sleep, but also allowed us to sort of concentrate and think about what matters to us in terms of our life holistically, where we want to go and what other opportunities we want to explore, what we want for our families and our future and ultimately what our retirement and our long-term stability is going to look like. So it's that type of mentality and that type of forward thinking that the FD Centre do deliver and I think it's overlooked massively.
What would you say to others considering taking on a portfolio FD/CFO?
Giles Guy Robertson: The FD Centre deliver quality resources by way of Financial Directors. I've had the opportunity of meeting a number through work and through networking. The FD we've had, Mr Tom Green, has proved invaluable. It gives you a shield to move forward and do what you do best, which is often not the financial side. So unless you're already an FD, unless you know your financial control measures, concentrate on your business, bring in somebody who knows the money better than you, so you can get on with your life and do what you want to do.
