How your finance team can boost your recruitment agency success
Finance teams have long been separate to the rest of the business, often located in a different office to the sales and operational staff, and most likely with their own software tools and confidential reports. That used to make sense – but things have changed.
Rather than keeping Finance separate, forward-thinking recruitment firms are now ramping up collaboration between their Finance people and the rest of the business. In this article, we find out why.
3 minutes
Written by James Ramage, Finance technology expert
In the new world of work, things are changing, not only on the back of the pandemic chaos and the disruption that caused – but also because it’s a highly competitive market out there and when you’re trying to grow your business, sometimes doing things differently is the most effective way to get ahead.
It’s a good time to take a fresh approach right now. Many recruitment firms have been creative in their thinking throughout and after the pandemic, finding new and more effective ways of working and flexing their business resources and tools to adapt to change. There’s no reason why that entrepreneurial spirit and business flexibility should be lost – it can also reset the mood in your firm and be the basis for adapting to the post-pandemic new ways of working.
Why should Finance Sales work more closely together?
It’s an interesting question. If your Finance team has worked successfully as a separate entity for years, why change it? The most compelling reason is that it can help to protect your cashflow and ensure long-standing client relationships aren’t inadvertently damaged. Why? There’s no question that the economic situation has been unstable for businesses across a variety of sectors over the last few years. Which means that many of your clients will have had difficulties to deal with, and for some, it will have impacted their ability to pay on time, or at all. That doesn’t mean they won’t be reliable clients again in the future – but it does mean a change in approach might be required in the meantime.
This is a prime example of where collaboration between Finance and Sales can be beneficial for your recruitment firm. With the right tools in place to keep track of client payment performance and risk, Finance can give Sales valuable insight into where problems may be occurring which they are not aware of. Being on top of the current situation – rather than assuming nothing is changing – puts your sales consultants in a much more informed position when deciding who to target, who to engage with, and what business terms to agree to.
Building awareness of risk up front saves money later
Upping the ante on collaboration between Finance and Sales isn’t just beneficial for the sales team. By taking a proactive approach and sharing information, Finance (and the business) benefits in the longer term too. Steering clear of the more risky and less reliable clients in the short term means there are fewer issues to deal with further down the line – such as late payment, bad debt and cashflow glitches. By supporting others, the Finance team also makes things easier for itself too.
