Do you have ongoing projects that you thought your staff could absorb and handle but now those projects just won’t come to a conclusion? You and many others have had this experience. Your team already works hard. The projects that either make things easier, provide more or better information, or move the business forward are just too much to add on. There are two choices. Either bring someone in to work on the project or someone to do your employees job while they work on the project. There are pros and cons to either. Which one do you want your expert on? Your employee has the history, you want to invest in them, give them the knowledge and experience that they will carry forward in the company. However you can’t afford for your existing books and processes to be broken while your expert is elsewhere. What if the person discovers they love the challenge and don’t want to go back to the day to day.
I think it comes down to who you have. Some people are not cut out for project management. The uncertainty of how things will work out, dealing with the problem solving on the fly, and especially dealing with the people involved. VPs that are stressed, employees that don’t do their part on time, the politics, the technical issues. A project manager must be friendly but firm, know when to stand their ground, be an excellent communicator. Others are the perfect choice as they already have the knowledge, relationships and influence, can manage people and timelines and will thrive. With the added exposure they can more easily move up in the organization.
Whatever the experience level and personality traits of your employees. Whichever way you decide to staff the projects. It is based on the talent you have, the best fit. If something changes or your first approach is not working feel free to contact me to explore how to solve. Talking/brainstorming costs you nothing.
At ExclusiveCFO we have project expertise in small to medium size company ERP and other software implementations, due diligence buy or sell side, audit preparation and management, financial statements, technical memos and other technical accounting to bring you to gaap. Any size company SEC Reporting, technical accounting, process improvement, building models and other excel resources. Personally I most enjoy Rent-a-CFO where I add most value.