Jerry Mills: Breakthrough CFO Model
The company’s upcoming 25th anniversary and a recent string of awards are solid validation of the pioneering concept on which Jerry Mills, founder and chief executive officer of Phoenix-based B2B CFO, founded his company. By Alison Stanton| October 31, 2011 The company’s upcoming 25th anniversary and a recent string of awards are solid validation of the pioneering concept on which Jerry Mills, founder and chief executive officer of Phoenix-based B2B CFO, founded his company. Back in the mid-1980s, while he was a manager with Arthur Andersen & Company, Mills came up with the idea of creating a company that would provide CFO services to small and mid-market companies, offering business owners solutions that would help improve any cash flow issues as well as the overall organization of the company. To support his theories, Mills developed a model of micro- and macro-economics that looked at the concept of “typical consulting” as it related to the point of diminishing marginal returns. His idea was to help alleviate the stress levels of business owners while simultaneously improving their sales and profits through the services of a part-time CFO. But when he pitched the concept of CFO services to his co-workers, he recalls, they weren’t as excited about it as he was. “It just wasn’t what they did at Arthur Andersen,” Mills says. “They concentrated mainly on audits and tax returns, and so this just didn’t fit in with the type of work that they did.” Undaunted, Mills decided to launch his own company based on his theories and research. “I thought it was a great idea, so I did it solely on...
CFO Pinch Hitters
Demand grows for temp finance chiefs who can jump in to help companies through reorganizations and turnarounds. -BY RUSS BANHAM Lisa Donahue is not your usual CFO. Although her career includes finance chief positions at sportswear manufacturer Umbro, energy producer Calpine and battery maker Exide Technologies, none of these companies paid Donahue’s salary. Rather, her compensation came from Alix Partners, a firm that helps companies through operational reorganizations and corporate turnarounds. Donahue is an interim CFO at the companies she serves, a role she is presently filling at Boston-based Atlantic Power, a publicly traded power producer. A cottage industry of CFO providers has emerged in the last 20 years, spurred initially by the failed leveraged buyouts of the mid-8os and more recently by increased competition brought on by globalization. Each of the firms involved, including Alix Partners, Tatum, Cerius, B2B CFO, TechCFO and several others, has its own value...
B2B CFO® Ranks in Arizona’s Top 25 Fastest Growing Companies
B2BCF0 RANK: No. 23 on the fast-growth list FOUNDER AND CEO: Jerry Mills HQ: Phoenix FOUNDED: 1987 EMPLOYEES: 197 partners across 39 states and four full-time employees in Mesa REVENUE INCREASE, 2009-10: 46.5 percent Q&A with founder Jerry L. Mills How do you maintain fast growth through the years? Maintaining steady, fast growth has been a matter of setting goals and then working diligently to build an infrastructure that supports our team and allows us to achieve our goals. It is also a matter of constant evaluation and making periodic adjustments to the process of the goal achievement. For example, when new technologies become available or when a process can be improved, we need to always adjust our course — first direction, then velocity. How does growth become a part of your business culture? I review my goals weekly. I also leverage the expertise and help from a personal coach who goes over my goals with me and helps me augment and expand them, causing me to stretch and grow at all times. I go over our goal achievements each month with the staff so the team will constantly have our progress in front of them. Making sure everyone knows the direction and the goals is crucial to our success. Looking out 12 months, what is your greatest obstacle to continued growth? I see absolutely no obstacles that will impede our ability to achieve and meet our...
Firms prove even the corner office can be outsourced
SOURCE: LONG ISLAND BUSINESS NEWS Firms prove even the corner office can be outsourced CFOs-for-hire fill gaps created by downsizing DATE: 09/12/2011 By: CLAUDE SOLNIK Marc Palker has been the CFO at Mr. Bar-B-Q for a year, but it hasn’t been a fulltime job. Palker, who has worked full time as a CFO for more than a half-dozen firms, is a director of CFO Consulting Partners, which provides interim and part-time chief financial officers who help with financial reporting and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, among other duties. He spends one to 1 Vi days a week at Mr. Bar-B-Q and works at other companies on other days. In what may be outsourcing’s newest trend, CFOs increasingly are working part time or an interim basis for small and midsized companies. “It works well for us because we don’t have the need for a full-time person,” said a spokesman for Mr. Bar-B-Q, an Old Bethpage distributor of barbecue tools. “He does reports, consulting, gives opinions.” While some firms bring in former CFOs to do work accounting firms – as much as traditional CFOs – might do, CFO outsourcers argue they typically provide a different perspective. CFOs typically help with strategy, deals and sometimes with compliance as well as leading financial operations. “Everybody in our firm is a former CFO,” said Alan Tepper, senior managing director at CFO Consulting Partners. “People at accounting firms never in the shoes of CFOs would provably approach the assignment differently.” Downsizing has both fueled demand for interim CFOs and placed many talented CFOs on the market. “A lot of people left the traditional work force by choice or...B2B CFO® are media experts on, and can speak to the media on:
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