How FD's Turn Dreams Into Plans

The old misconception that a Financial Director is just an overpaid accountant is fast disappearing from the Thames Valley business world, and that’s largely due to FD’s like those at the Thames Valley FD Centre changing that misconception at grass roots level, in and amongst the local business community.

The Unique Approach 

It doesn't take long once one of our Financial Directors starts working with a business for it to experiencing the unique approach we bring. Actually there are two different types of customers. There are customers who have set up on their own having previously worked for large companies. These guys know what value an FD can bring to a business as they have seen their added value for themselves. They will take a part time FD on board at the earliest opportunity. On the other hand there’s the self-made man or woman who has never worked for a large organisation and is therefore unfamiliar with commercial finance people, or ‘bean growers’ as I like to call them. Someone like that, who has set up on their own in business and become relatively successful, doesn't realise how much a commercial FD can grow their business.

The Next Level 

The fact is that with an FD they could take themselves to the next level and become a much more successful business. In a much faster time frame.  They are able to take the carefully calculated initiatives they wouldn’t otherwise have even considered because they have all the information and with that, the confidence to take risks.

A lot of businesses get stuck in a rut and can't move beyond their current turnover and profit levels. This is often around the one or two million turnover mark but varies by business. It is the stage where to profitably grow the business; the owner needs to rely on the skills of people other than herself and needs to take decisions that may well be outside her own comfort level.

Turn Dreams Into Plans

An FD will come in and say “OK, let’s look at the whole market, let’s look at other areas you could go into, let’s look at the skills you need to take the business to that next level and let’s look at the best way of financing this growth”. You may even find yourself raising finance for the first time which can be a scary prospect but, once that’s securely in place, we can turn those dreams into plans.

Ali

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Meet My FD Dream Team

I absolutely adore my team – I just love them. Most of them are hand picked by me, and as I get such a large number of highly qualified people applying to join the Thames Valley Financial Director Centre I can afford to be very particular about who comes on board.

I want my team to reflect our customer base out there so I’ve got all sorts of different personalities, all sorts of different skills and different types of experience built into the team. I like to ensure we have manufacturing experience, legal experience, software and I.T. experience and at the same time it's my responsibility to decide which FD best fits each particular company we work with and in doing that I need to take into account the personality of the business drivers and the sector skills required.

I put a high premium on recruiting people with great personality. So there’s always a danger that I’ll keep recruiting people like myself: loud, extrovert FD’s who are all very go getting. But as I’ve come to see that not everybody wants a big personality as an FD, I’ve created a great mixture and depth of personalities. We have got some very serious guys, we’ve got some very studious guys and some very casual guys.

I have one to ones with each team member on a regular basis, I love listening to them and working with them to bring success within their own customer base. It's great to sit down with them, one to one, to develop and review the work plans they have in place for each of their clients. We run six to eight month plans for what we are going to do and what value we are going to add for each client and I just love working on their challenges with them.

Isn’t it good to know that your business too can benefit directly by working with the Thames Valley FD dream team?

Ali

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