It was once {that a} chief monetary officer’s major focus was on the normal capabilities of the job: monitoring money stream and monetary actions; serving as a controller and accounting professional; limiting pointless spending; and making certain that monetary selections conformed to plain working procedures.
These duties are nonetheless important, after all, however they’re more and more turning into secondary to the strategic roles CFOs are being requested to play. Because the tempo of enterprise accelerates and know-how advances, the fashionable CFO should take a broader, extra forward-thinking and growth-oriented strategy to the job.
The consulting agency Accenture captured this transformation in a 2022 survey, discovering that typical finance chiefs now spend most of their time spearheading companywide efforts to rework and optimize enterprise operations, with an emphasis on accelerating income and revenue development.
It’s a brand new actuality that I’ve seen play out amongst fast-growing small and medium-size healthcare companies the place I’ve held plenty of management positions. These corporations not solely count on you to be a practical CFO, delivering on primary accounting obligations, additionally they count on you to be a strategic CFO, working with the management group to discover development alternatives and maximize profitability.
So how do you develop this strategic experience? By way of trial and error, I’ve discovered that the best means is to focus in your present finance capabilities and obligations—these capabilities which are already inside your purview as a CFO—and elevate them to ship the strategic perception your organization wants.
On this article, I share six areas the place I like to recommend you focus. The event of the abilities I talk about may be utilized broadly to development corporations and employed throughout a large spectrum—by fractional CFOs working with later-stage startups, by interim CFOs in distressed conditions, and even by finance chiefs employed by public corporations.
In terms of increasing and bolstering your present capabilities, I talk about the simplest areas first. The later ones, particularly company imaginative and prescient, will in all probability devour extra of your time, however I count on you’ll discover that mastering them is effectively price it to you and your organization. I embody examples to point out you ways I put every of those ideas into motion.
1. Reporting and Forecasting
Reporting and forecasting are desk stakes for a finance chief. The proliferation of software program as a service (SaaS) and cloud companies has made it simpler and cheaper to combine highly effective accounting techniques throughout a company. A practical CFO should be certain that everybody who wants entry to those techniques has been absolutely onboarded and is utilizing them, whereas a strategic chief appears to be like for alternatives to delve deeper into the data to floor actionable insights for the group.
I can finest clarify the way to develop this space by sharing how I demonstrated to 1 firm that absolutely onboarding a group is an important step—even for management. I labored for an early-stage healthcare companies firm the place the CEO tracked company financials on an Excel worksheet he saved on his desktop and up to date at evening and on weekends. This apply created apparent issues. First, his shadow financials had been typically incomplete. Second, his apply prompted a disconnect that prevented the finance group from growing a routine of updating data and producing helpful and well timed insights for the CEO. With out this routine, the CEO was flying blind when it got here to gross sales and profitability decision-making.
After I joined, I helped the corporate standardize all of the accounting, operational, and monetary reporting templates, and the chart of accounts. The corporate and I then agreed on a reporting calendar for when the finance group would give the CEO and board the newest revenue assertion, steadiness sheet, money stream assertion, and customer- and product-level segmentation. That report additionally frequently offered data on the efficiency of particular person departments, evaluating the figures for every with that division’s finances, forecast, and prior-year numbers.
We didn’t cease with standardizing companywide reporting, nonetheless. We leveraged the data to suggest operational modifications that may enhance areas of monetary underperformance. This not solely freed up the CEO’s nights and weekends, but additionally gave us strategic perception into the corporate’s operations whereas lowering the administration group’s anxiousness and stress underneath the earlier fragmented reporting system.
2. Monetary Planning and Evaluation
The following logical step for a strategic CFO is to search for methods to use standardized databases and quantitative abilities in monetary planning and evaluation. FP&A is often used to supply data-driven solutions to monetary and operational efficiency questions going through any facet of the corporate. Some are routine analyses, resembling evaluating the present interval’s efficiency to the prior one’s, whereas others are advert hoc analyses resembling calculating the return on funding for a brand new gross sales enablement know-how platform. A strategic CFO makes use of the identical processes and will tackle a few of the identical questions as a practical CFO however takes a extra proactive strategy.
After I joined a pharmaceutical producer as CFO, I discovered that few of the corporate’s senior leaders knew which buyer, product, or geography generated the best development or income. This turned an issue when the corporate needed to shortly improve profitability. After implementing primary reporting enhancements, I performed a complete profitability evaluation of the corporate’s a number of enterprise and buyer segments to start to reply broader strategic questions.
Utilizing FP&A enterprise intelligence instruments like Microsoft Energy BI, we pinpointed the sources of the best development and the best earnings and losses. We then broke them down by product class, product SKU, buyer, enterprise unit, and geography. However we didn’t simply produce a report that sat in colleagues’ inboxes. We looped in cross-functional groups to assist us design, develop, and glean insights from the reviews, and hosted in-depth conversations with govt leaders of every practical space about business and operational modifications that may maximize monetary efficiency.
Inside a short while, the corporate had a holistic understanding of which segments contributed earnings. Simply as essential, we had full alignment amongst senior leaders that we should always give attention to probably the most worthwhile segments. This technique allowed us to almost double the corporate’s profitability in lower than a yr.
3. Threat Administration and Mitigation
If finance leaders thought danger administration was simply an administrative footnote to monetary oversight, then the COVID-19 pandemic and breakdowns in world provide chains upended that false impression. At present, CFOs should take a job in pushing groups throughout the group to make danger assessments and frequently tackle questions of mitigation. On the identical time, they should see danger administration by the prism of alternative, searching for the place it creates potential business openings.
For instance, from 2017 to 2020, I used to be answerable for a bunch of corporations that imported important elements for medical merchandise to China or assembled them there. The businesses loved cross-border, lower-cost arbitrage and persistently expanded gross margins for a few years. Nonetheless, after I joined, I might see operational, regulatory, and macroeconomic dangers on the horizon. We engaged senior leaders in thought-provoking quarterly discussions to anticipate doable hazards so we might dedicate sources and take motion to mitigate probably the most urgent materials dangers. The groups persistently highlighted the doable operational and monetary dangers of cross-border commerce boundaries disrupting important element shipments.
This proved prescient when a commerce warfare flared up between the US and China in 2018. As a result of we had been ready by our danger planning, my group of corporations was capable of decrease provide chain disruptions by leveraging backup element sources in different elements of Asia and Europe. Integrating danger administration into the corporate tradition allow us to not solely cut back or neutralize dangers, but additionally restricted affect on the underside line, creating business alternatives for our gross sales and advertising groups to extend market share. We continued reliably delivering merchandise and options whereas our rivals had been nonetheless dealing with disruptions.
4. Digital Transformation
It’s routine for a CFO to ask division heads to do extra with much less. Finance chiefs can prepared the ground by doing so themselves, inspecting methods to automate back-office operations to free staff from repetitive duties whereas saving money and time. Automation also can support the finance division because it offers with the fixed cycle of labor spiking inside tight timetables: month-to-month closes, pressing evaluation requests, and the crunch interval round mergers and acquisitions. Being perpetually in need of palms and hours inevitably results in excessive ranges of stress.
I discovered how obligatory this transition was firsthand. After a reorganization at a world manufacturing agency, my finance group was staffed with simply two enterprise analysts. This lean group was answerable for reporting and analyzing monetary outcomes for 25 portfolio corporations each month inside two enterprise days. It merely wasn’t possible for 2 folks to finish this spreadsheet-based copy-and-paste mission inside 48 hours. Automation was the one resolution.
We invested a small quantity into robotic course of automation to deal with routine reporting processes and restructured the group’s strategy, serving to the 2 analysts grow to be specialists in enterprise intelligence and visualization programming. Utilizing these applied sciences, the 2 had been capable of full the reporting duties in a single working day. They used the time they saved to undertake evaluation and work with enterprise leaders to enhance the reporting with actionable insights.
Seizing on these learnings, our company improvement groups took the same strategy: They automated their month-to-month outreach, permitting them to contact 10 instances the variety of potential acquisition targets and thus domesticate a bigger accomplice pipeline.
5. Expertise and Tradition
One beneficial means a CFO can take a extra strategic function is by turning into extra immediately concerned in recruiting and cultivating expertise. As an alternative of simply advising HR on staffing necessities, a strategic CFO will accomplice with HR to create alternatives to carry high-performing monetary expertise into the group.
For example, I as soon as helped recruit a really proficient govt to a small healthcare machine manufacturing firm that my agency owned, regardless that I knew we had been going to promote it inside the subsequent yr. We requested this particular person to hitch because the vice chairman of finance, stabilize the corporate, and efficiently full the sale—regardless that we didn’t have a particular function lined up for him afterward. This might have been a tough promote had we not approached this candidate with transparency, honesty, and a dedication to retaining him in a senior function.
A yr after the sale, we delivered on the dedication and he turned CFO of our largest portfolio enterprise. Three years later, he was promoted to be the holding firm finance chief, overseeing all portfolio corporations.
As CFO, taking an lively function in growing a high-potential finance chief meant I used to be contributing to the corporate’s long-term technique by serving to to safe an worker who might steer the corporate in a post-sale future. Whereas all of this transpired within the finance division, others in several practical areas observed and adopted related approaches to recruiting and cultivating high-potential expertise in gross sales, advertising, operations, and know-how.
6. Strategic Planning
Firms worth the laborious knowledge and empirical mindset {that a} finance chief lends to strategic planning. The CFO can use this as a possibility to contribute to the transformation of an organization’s business targets or capabilities, as an example, by championing acquisitions or introducing partnerships to increase aggressive benefits.
I had the chance to place this into motion whereas working with an rising markets cardiovascular diagnostic firm that made coronary heart displays. The corporate had aggregated terabytes of coronary heart rhythm knowledge by the hundreds of units it had bought. This knowledge was a singular asset, however the firm didn’t use the data for any business functions. As CFO, I thought-about any giant supply of distinctive knowledge as a potential alternative in a world the place SaaS enterprise fashions may be commercialized shortly.
I challenged the group to make use of that knowledge as the premise of an analytics service whereas defending affected person confidentiality. After months of improvement with native software program companions, the group unveiled a brand new service to hospitals to offer real-time monitoring, evaluation, and alerts if the software program detected irregular rhythms in a affected person. The service deepened buyer relationships and added a extremely worthwhile income stream.
With better visibility and deeper insights concerning the firm, the strategic CFO develops a perspective about what merchandise, capabilities, and M&A alternatives can create transformative worth for his or her firm. But it’s essential to remember that what really elevates your contribution to a development firm comes all the way down to management.
The demand on companies to satisfy targets is immense, particularly as macroeconomic pressures rise and enterprise capital, non-public fairness, and public market expectations for monetary efficiency proceed to climb. Firms want management, and leaders should ship development. The strategic CFO is uniquely empowered on this respect. When the fashionable CFO rises above their practical obligations and offers beneficial strategic insights, they will help their firm rework and develop for the long run.
