CFO Network provides financial team to small businesses.(Law)

WHEN MAINSTREAM TECHNOLOGIES Inc. hit about $1.5 million in sales about thee years ago, the Little Rock company s finances had officially outgrown the abilities of its techie founders.

Mainstream's founders, John Burgess and Mark McClelland, who started the company on a few hundred incorporation dollars and a copy of QuickBooks, needed a trained bookkeeper to look after their increasingly complex finances.

Rather than hiring an accountant, Mainstream sought the services of CFO Network of North Little Rock.

CFO Network thrives on the disproportionate growth of certain aspects of small businesses.

When a small business reaches a certain size, which varies for each business, it may need more financial expertise, particularly strategic financial advice, than a bookkeeper can provide. However, a small business seldom, if ever, can afford to hire a financial team at that same point.

CFO Network aims to provide small businesses with the same financial resources that a large company has, CFO Network Managing Partner Allen Engstrom said.

CFO Network does so by timesharing a financial team to a portfolio of businesses. Each team of two bookkeepers, an accountant and a controller can serve between six and 12 clients.

Engstrom said the cost of CFO Network's services usually mirrors the annual salary of one accountant.

That, however, is just the balancing act. CFO Network also provides strategic financial advice to clients, in which it helps a company focus on the "value drivers" of a business.

"If you're a business owner, you could fill up a hundred-page notebook full of all the great things that you could do today," Engstrom said. "The trick is to really boil all those hundreds of things down to the top 10 things that really matter."

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