I interviewed ten CFOs at companies that make physical things. Companies like Fanatics, Rivian, Spirit, 8 Sleep, CoreWeave, Locus Robotics, The North Face, and more.
What came out of it is this (FREE) 39 page report on how the best CFOs optimize their operations.
The five real world problems we analyze in this report
1. Your cash spends most of its life as an object
Working capital management is a full time job when you touch the real world.
2. Getting paid is an operations problem
AP and AR get talked about like they are siblings, but they are barely related. AR has so many more variables, and is the manifestation of your business model.
3. You don't control your own inputs
When you make physical stuff, you are downstream from a multitude of supply chain partners. The product development lifecycles are longer, and there are productivity cliffs within any manufacturing plant.
4. Sales tax is a physical problem
Everything you own and everyone you employ creates an obligation somewhere. I once undid a full year of getting a company out of New York State by green-lighting one IT hire. My controller has still not forgiven me
5. Nobody has built the metric for what you do
Fanatics looks at time to door step. Locus Robotics looks at cost per pick in a warehouse. You have to invent your best measure of productivity.
Download the report today for free
(plz read my book report, it almost killed me to write).
Hoping your supply chain is healthy AF.
CJ
