Doing omnichannel marketing may also have you looking to expand into the global marketplace. Content personalization, omnichannel marketing, expansion into the global marketplace, automation, and so on. “At this level, you need a combination of resources to run your business most effectively” (Scharf, 2018).
Where do you go from here?
Outsourcing may be required for global expansion operations, and having a strong CPA team helping strategize on the financial impacts of expansion is critical here. This is where a fractional CFO can help.
Your accounting team is checking all your numbers regularly, and in most cases at this level in real-time. Your virtual controller is helping forecast and plan. And now your fractional CFO will help ensure that every financial box is being checked when expanding into omnichannel and international sales. “In the past, complicated taxes and high shipping costs have made expanding sales overseas a major challenge for SMBs, but new technology has lowered the barriers for small businesses looking to take advantage of untapped markets” (D’Angelo, 2018).”
Technology, as a whole, will be central to your eCommerce business’ growth and progress. From accounting to inventory to sales to taxes, you’ll want a strategy making sure all of these systems are talking with one-another and creating as much automated efficiency to keep any unnecessary human interaction out as much as possible. “The Shopify/ReCharge combination for subscription recurring billing comes to mind. These services work great together, but they become questionable as massive growth occurs. This is mainly due to the two components not being able to pass data back and forth in real-time, making manual data entry and reporting a bottleneck for scaling” (Hubbard, 2020). As your business has now experienced massive growth, you may need to take a closer look at the technological foundation that supports your company’s processes and creates your customers’ experiences.
Doing a thorough overhaul of your technology systems and network processes may feel like a tedious task, but it’s one that is well worth pursuing.
First, it’s essential that your software is not only providing the best possible consumer experience on the front-end, but also that the back-end systems are accessible and collaborative. Your business process commerce architecture is an essential tool that will help your team communicate better, work more efficiently, and stay agile in their actions to meeting your businesses goals.
Second, refining your tech stack is a great way to increase performance and multiply profit margins. Doing this will also allow your CPA team to perform more tasks through software automation and review more data accessed in real-time, enhancing your business’ operational capabilities and doubling down on your financial health. “Be diligent with these details because they are what can make or break you” (Thomason, 2020).
With your plan to continue scaling your business, you’ll need to invest time, people, and resources into researching new and upcoming technologies to support your growth. “A focus on scalability means investing in the business’ overall commerce architecture, the ecosystem of software components that are used to operate the business. This includes the e-commerce platform, CMS, ERP, CRM, OMS, PIM, marketing suites, analytics and reporting, etc.” (Hubbard, 2020). A valuable CPA team can help advise on your tech-stack so that you’re creating as much technological efficiency as possible at this level. Streamlining at this level will only make your life easier, and can cause your personal wealth to move into ‘auto-pilot’ mode, as you breeze past your projected annual profits.
Depending on your goals, your Phase 4 will look different. You may be intent on maintaining your lifestyle, determined to grow by a marginal amount each year, or focused on continued expansion by accelerating into omnichannel eCommerce sales. An experienced CPA team of advisors, coaches and strategizers that are working together to help you achieve your goals is an invaluable piece of the eCommerce selling puzzle, one that exists solely so that you can do your job better.
Whichever Phase you find your business in today, don’t put your success in the hands of unlicensed ‘Craigslist’ bookkeepers.
Get a CPA firm aligned with your vision who charges a fixed monthly price for all of your anticipated CPA needs, and who provides you with unlimited communication and access. Insogna CPA’s team of experts is here to help you when you’re ready.