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The idea of hiring even a part-time FD may seem to some SMEs a bit OTT—like paying Quentin Tarantino to make a 90-second home page video or booking Wembley Stadium for the company’s five-a-side friendly football match.

But for companies whose ambition is to get into and survive the coveted scale-up phase, hiring a part-time FD makes perfect sense. They know that they’re getting a finance veteran, someone with big business experience, who can provide the guidance they need to grow rapidly and help them to avoid the costly mistakes that so many ambitious SMEs make as they attempt to move into the Big League.

You might think a Finance Director’s role is confined to traditional finance activities, but today’s FD (or CFO) can do so much more than count beans.

In the past, an FD’s responsibilities might have been confined to high-level accounting such as providing timely financial statements and monthly management reports, managing investments and expenses, monitoring cash flow, and managing risk. But as the business landscape has become more complex over the past decade, the role of an FD has changed.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already transforming the way in which financial services companies are doing business.

More and more of them are using AI to process information on their customers, cut costs, save time, monitor behaviour patterns, assess credit quality, automate client interactions, analyse markets, assess data quality and detect fraud.

A pwc Digital IQ 2017 survey found that 72% of business decision makers believe AI will be the business advantage of the future.[1] About 52% said they’re currently making “substantial investments” in AI,

You shouldn’t be surprised to discover that Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Hugh Jackman, Gary Oldman among many other Oscar-winning actors and actresses bear a grudge against Finance Directors.

It’s easy to understand why. For although the likes of Streep and Oldman have achieved fame, fortune and critical acclaim, they can usually only inhabit one role at a time. They take it on for a few months and then move on to the next.

We are delighted to be mentioned on page 3 of The Sunday Business Post. The Sunday Business Post is Ireland’s leading business, economic and political newspaper celebrating 25 years of independent journalism and is distributed nationally every Sunday.

Journalist Tom Lyons, spoke with Bart Kane our Regional Director for Dublin, who discussed our aim to grow the business fivefold in 3 years “We think there is capacity in this business for 50 Financial Directors and we can get there in 5 years”.

Could your company afford to pay a 20 million Euro fine or to lose 4% of your annual global turnover?

It’s a question you should be asking because it’s the penalty that your company will face if you fail to gain your customers’ consent to process their data or deliberately breach their privacy under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which comes into effect within weeks. All companies in the EU regardless of size or sector and all those that deal with data from EU citizens wherever those companies are in the world must be compliant with GDPR by May 25 this year.

The collapse of Carillion, the UK’s second largest construction company, has exposed the enormous risk SMEs take by placing too much reliance on one major customer.

The construction company, which employed 43,000 people worldwide and had 450 key public-sector infrastructure projects on its books, went into compulsory liquidation on January 15 with £1.5b debts. That followed the failure of last-minute rescue talks between the company, lenders, and the government.  It is believed to have used 30,000 sub-contractors to carry out work on those projects.

We are delighted to announce The FD Centre Ireland has been named as Galway Chamber’s “Business of the Week”. Galway Chamber is a premier business organisation based in Galway City and its hinterland. They currently represent approximately 500 companies and is a privately constituted organisation that works for the interests of businesses, and for the economic development of the City and Region.

Regional Director Milo Molloy represented The FD Centre and spoke to Galway Chamber about the company and his thoughts of living in such an innovative city.