Strategy
Where should we compete?
Put capital into the few things that reinforce each other, and stop funding the rest.
Chief Financial Officer · Industrial manufacturing
Robert McFarlin, CMA
I’m the CFO of RCM Industries, a manufacturer with six entities and four plants. I joined in 2014 as accounting manager. These days most of my work is building the systems finance runs on, from capital approval and reporting to automation and controls.
- Certified Management Accountant
- Master of Accountancy, Stetson University
Greenville, SC · robertmcfarlin.com · linkedin.com/in/rdmcfarlin
- 3×
- Available credit since 2023
- −50 bps
- Borrowing cost since 2023
- 15 yrs
- Accounting and finance
- 12 yrs
- At RCM Industries
Results
What has changed since 2023
I became CFO in 2023. These are the changes I’d point to first.
-
Banking
We put our primary banking relationship out to competitive bid. Available credit tripled and borrowing cost fell 50 bps.
-
Reporting
We rebuilt company reporting on a Microsoft Fabric lakehouse with a Direct Lake semantic model. Production, labor, and financial data now update in close to real time instead of once a month.
-
Capital approval
Big spending requests go through stage gates, the way a private equity firm would run them, and we forecast fixed charge coverage across the whole portfolio before we commit.
-
Automation
The recurring manual work is automated, so the team spends that time on analysis.
-
Internal audit
As the company grew it needed someone looking at governance, compliance, and risk. We built that function from nothing.
-
One HR system
Four locations used to run payroll and HR separately. They now share one HRIS.
Approach
How I think about the job
Most of what I do comes back to one of these questions.
Focus
What actually makes us money?
Find the customers, products, plants, and workflows that drive most of the profit, cash, and risk. It’s usually a short list.
Reporting
How soon can we know?
A month-end package tells you what already happened. I’d rather have operating data every day, forecasts that update quickly, and controls built into the work itself.
Experience
From staff accountant to CFO
I started in accounting at ScanSource, a public technology distributor, and joined RCM in 2014. I’ve held four roles there since.
Career at a glance
Three promotions in nine years at RCM, from accounting manager to CFO.
Chief Financial OfficerRCM Industries
Corporate ControllerRCM Industries
Division ControllerRCM Industries
Accounting ManagerRCM Industries
Staff AccountantScanSource
RCM Industries, Inc.
2014 – Present
Chief Financial OfficerCurrent
2023 – Present
Capital allocation, banking, reporting systems, automation, and controls for a manufacturer with six entities and four plants. What has changed since 2023 is under Results.
Corporate Controller
2017 – 2022
- Built the company’s financial reporting from scratch in Power BI, on an imported semantic model.
- Led the accounting, AP/AR, and payroll teams across four plants.
- Built consolidated forecasting models for planning and resource allocation, and owned reporting for the six-entity group.
Division Controller
2016 – 2017
- Owned the plant P&L.
- Built KPI dashboards for inventory, carrying costs, and operating drivers, and worked with plant operators on efficiency projects.
Accounting Manager
2014 – 2016
Prepared and analyzed financial statements for multiple manufacturing plants, and simplified the reporting so people could trust the numbers.
ScanSource, Inc.
Staff Accountant
2011 – 2014
Managed balance sheet reconciliations and revenue accounting, and was the finance lead on the SAP implementation.
Capabilities
Skills and credentials
Each of these is tied to real work at RCM.
- Capital and banking
- Capital allocation · Stage gate approvals · Fixed charge coverage forecasting · Banking
- Data and automation
- Microsoft Fabric · Direct Lake · Power BI · Python and ETL · Excel, VBA, and Power Query · Finance automation
- Controls and reporting
- Internal audit · Group reporting · Plant KPIs · HRIS consolidation
- Leadership
- Took teams at four plants through new systems, new controls, and a change of bank.
Credential
Certified Management Accountant (CMA)Institute of Management AccountantsGraduate
Master of AccountancyStetson UniversityUndergraduate
B.S. Business Administration, AccountingUniversity of South Carolina UpstateContinuing study
Financial modeling, data analytics, strategy, and valuationContinuing educationPrinciples
Five rules I work by
How I run a finance team, and what the people around me can expect.
- 01
Make progress you can measure
Every system, report, or automation has to move the business forward in a way I can measure and defend.
- 02
Give more in value than you receive in compensation
Deliver clear answers early, raise problems before they get expensive, and work for the whole company.
- 03
Everyone sweeps the floor
No task is beneath the person accountable for the result.
- 04
Share good news quickly, and bad news even quicker
The sooner the people who can act hear about a problem, the smaller the fix.
- 05
Treat every experience as a chance to learn
When something goes wrong, ask what we saw too late and how to see it sooner next time.
Outlook
Where the CFO role is going
I expect the most valuable CFOs of the next decade to own the data systems that produce the forecast.
What’s already changing
- AI agents doing routine accounting and finance work
- Daily operating data shortening the monthly close
- Spreadsheets used for analysis instead of as the system of record
- CFOs owning data systems as well as the books
What I’m building
- AI agents that answer financial and operating questions
- Direct Lake semantic models as the main way people read the general ledger
- Plain-English questions as the query interface for operations
- Modular finance systems in place of one large ERP
Contact
If you’re working on any of this, I’d like to hear about it.
I’m always glad to compare notes with other finance and operations people on capital, banking, data, automation, and where the CFO role is headed. LinkedIn is the fastest way to reach me.
I am based out of Greenville, SC. In my time away from work, I enjoy watching baseball, racing, and playing disc golf.