When growing their business, Founders must wear multiple hats to gain momentum and scale, whether that’s validating products, identifying new markets, selling their products or hiring employees. And as a result, the “back-office” part of the business tends to suffer.
Finance Without Borders provides the absolute best in cloud-based bookkeeping and accounting services — from strategic CFO guidance and back office support to Cloud-based accounting technology tools — to Founders to equip them with financial discipline, a foundation for future growth and peace of mind. Whether you’re a startup, corporation or international business, there’s no limit to the support that Finance Without Borders can provide.
Spark Centre caught up with Finance Without Borders’ Founder and Virtual CFO, Christine Montag to learn more about an exciting new service for startups and scaleups that was recently added to their long line-up of innovative services.
Q: What is Finance Without Borders?
FWB: Finance Without Borders (or FWB for short) is a fractionalized outsourced finance team. We work like your small business’ internal, back-office finance team to develop strategic insights into your business’ financial health and build a plan for future growth.
FWB empowers you to steer your growing business’ finances toward its strategic goals. We offer bookkeeping, global payroll, compliance through to CFO support and work alongside your team as your business demands change.
Q: What inspired you to create Finance Without Borders?
FWB: I’m a true entrepreneur at heart. I’ve launched multiple startups myself but I decided to come back to my roots and focus on supporting other entrepreneurs. The original intention was to offer fractional CFO support but the reality is startups need various types of support from the basics of bookkeeping, payroll and compliance services through to full-on CFO support. I founded FWB to offer entrepreneurs foundational support to give them a fighting chance when starting their business. Startups are challenging and FWB aims to alleviate some pressures on the Founders so that they can focus on their core strengths and get their businesses off the ground.
Q: FWB is launching an exciting new service! What can you tell us about it?
FWB: The last two-plus years of the pandemic presented unique challenges for many small-to-medium sized businesses (SMEs). Many entrepreneurs realized just how outdated their businesses operations were and how that traditional mindset added even more operational challenges when the world locked down during COVID-19. The pandemic helped entrepreneurs understand that there is a better way to future-proof their businesses should something like this happen again.
Surprisingly, only five percent of SMEs are digitally advanced. As digital transformation can help businesses reach new markets, the time to look at digital transformation is now. FWB recently launched a new service to support SMEs in developing their Digital Adoption Plan. This Plan will review the current systems that you have in place and put forward a new plan to bring together best-in-class digital solutions to transform your digital presence, concept of operations and business planning.
“I wanted to build a practice that provided the strategy and services that a growing business requires without all the overhead. No borders; no limits.”
Q: What challenges have you seen entrepreneurs face that inspired this new service?
FWB: Since inception, FWB has offered cloud-based back-end office solutions but COVID-19 brought with it a new reality for business owners and has pushed the adoption of these services to the forefront. We support early stage startup and scale up companies and we see our success as our client’s success and growth. Digital transformation is the way of the future and the time is now to help our clients get on board.
Q: What are the benefits that startups and scaleups can expect with utilizing this new service?
FWB:Through Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada, the Canadian government launched a four-year program that supports Canadian-owned SMEs who want to adopt new digital technologies. This a two-phase program offering up to $15,000 in grant funding helps SMEs to develop a digital adoption plan and includes a an zero, interest-free loan for implementation. FWB has received approval as a Digital Advisor under this program.
Q: What is a key takeaway for startups and entrepreneurs when it comes to digital transformation?
FWB: If as a business owner you have any doubt about the value that digital transformation will bring to your business, please look around you at the businesses that have thrived or failed during the pandemic. The businesses that had already adopted or who were quick to adopt digital technologies had experienced great success. This is the way the of the future !
You can learn more about Finance Without Borders here.
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