Financial Solutions

          What are Financial Solutions for small companies?

          Finance is a key activity in managing your business since most business decisions have financial implications. There are many important business decisions that small companies make that require specific finance knowledge that usually only mature companies can afford when they have a dedicated strategic finance expert or CFO (chief financial officer).

          The following are examples of important business questions that any company must analyze and answer that require specific financial expertise:

          - ​Investment decisions: How to assess if the company should invest in a new product line or build a new more efficient distribution system? 

          - ​Financing decisions: What is the best financing mix for the company based on its size, stage, time horizon, cost of financing and overall market conditions?

          - ​Long term financial planning: How to prepare an effective financial plan?

          - ​Budgeting: How to budget business operations for the next month, quarter, or year?

          - ​Financial reporting: What are the key performance indicators (KPI) to track? How to present the KPI in a concise way, and assess if the company is doing well?

          - ​Business valuations: How much should a company pay to acquire another company? How much is the value of the current company if we would like to sell?

          - ​Support in strategy development: Can the company afford the current or new strategy? How can we quantify the business strategy?

          - Support in loan applications: Which documents should I present to improve my chances to get a loan or funding? 

          How can BI FINANCE help you?

          When entrepreneurs or small companies start a business the finance and accounting functions are usually performed by the entrepreneur or someone from the founding team as a side activity. As small companies grow, they hire a full-time or part-time employee to do the day-to-day accounting and they work together with an external accounting firm to help them with the year-end financial accounts and tax filing. However, for the important business questions mentioned above, there is usually no expertise at hand.

          This is were BI FINANCE can help you, as a stepping stone before you bring a dedicated CFO-like role into your organization, or to complement the financial skills your company currently has. With our expertise and approach, we make it possible for your company to get best-in-class advice in the following areas:


          Financial Strategy

          While most or all other finance roles in your organization involve maintaining past and present financial records, it is important to have someone that brings the higher level, bigger picture financial perspective and acts as a sounding board to the management team. We can help you in that role for important decisions or to support your strategy development process. 

          Budgeting

          While a financial plan is typically a 5-year projection of your main financial positions, a budget plans out in more detail your operating assumptions for a shorter time frame (a month, quarter, or year). A budget is crucial to the day-to-day operations of an organization. This budget helps guide the year’s financial decisions while keeping the organization on track to reach its goals. We can help you to develop a budget and to track if your financial performance is in line with the budget and your company goals.

          Capital Structure

          How much financing do you need, and what combination of debt and equity will help you uphold company value while achieving the growth you desire? We can help you determine what capital structure is ideal for your organization.

          Financial Planning

          A financial plan is one of the most important tools an organization can have. It is the detailed financial and operational roadmap giving a step-by-step guide to take you from where you are now to your future goals. A financial plan requires analysis, strategy, and practicality. It requires strategic understanding of the current and future capabilities of your company, mastery of financial tools and trends, as well as an understanding of the competitive landscape within your industry. We can help you create a long-term financial plan for your business.

          Financial Reporting

          Finances are imperative to the daily operations of an organization, and financial reports keep you apprised of your current -and future- standings. We can help you in creating effective financial reports. A good financial report gives you the opportunity to ask questions, re-strategize when needed, stay aware of what is happening in your business, and have the information you need to make your essential business decisions. If you don’t currently have a reliable process for timely, accurate financial reporting, we will also help you build a reporting system in place.

          Merger & Acquisitions

          Whether your transaction includes a merger, acquisition, or partial, public, entity or asset sale, we can help you with the following tasks: preliminary analysis and reporting, forecasting, valuation, relevant documentation preparation, overall process management.


          BI FINANCE approach

          At BI FINANCE we focus first on how our expertise can help you and only second on financial remuneration. We will discuss together in detail your requirements, how we can help you, and the final expected outcome.  We will then estimate the amount of time it will take us to deliver the desired outcome and calculate a fair fix fee or hourly rate.

          Why BI FINANCE?

          BI FINANCE is Mariano de la Torre. I created BI FINANCE to provide small and medium sized companies, as well as entrepreneurs, access to best-in-class financial expertise tailored to their needs and budgets. 

          I have more than 20 years of experience in finance. I learned and applied the core investment and corporate finance concepts and solutions while working for international private equity and investments banks (Partners Group, Credit Suisse, WestLB and Deutsche Bank). I also have tangible operational experience while working for companies (Swarovski and Outdoor Switzerland) in strategy, financial advisory, and CFO roles. I hold a MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and co-own a privately-held outdoor activity company (Hightide), where I’m actively involved in managing the business.

          While developing Hightide and being the CFO at Outdoor Switzerland I realized that small companies need to constantly make critical business decisions (investing in a new warehouse, launching a new product, acquiring another business) but do not have the financial expertise to analyze such decisions. Small companies usually do not have access to a strategic financial expert or CFO (chief financial officer). Hiring corporate finance advisory firms or boutiques to help them with these topics is - in many cases - not affordable. Despite this challenge, critical business decisions are still being made but unfortunately with limited analysis, leading to potential costly mistakes or lost opportunities. With that challenge in mind, I started to help companies providing best-in-class advice tailored to their needs and budgets.

          Contact me if you want to learn more about how I can help you with any of the finance topics mentioned above.