Achieve business growth while improving performance within your finance function. Our CFO Solutions are designed to provide expert resources for managing financial strategies and operations.
The CFO role is evolving into a lead partner in shaping strategy and executing the company’s choice to grow organically or through M&A. To be effective in this new role, Sophisticated CFO Strategy Solutions need the ability to create real operational and financial options for shifting that core strategy choice. This requires a deep capacity for decision-making and a commitment to bringing the right mix of skills and perspectives to strategic conversations.
Increasingly, this means developing the capability to analyze and visualize data, identifying trends and assumptions and creating scenarios based on actual performance. It also means cultivating a mind-set that asks the most important questions and frames the right answers for the company.
CFOs with this approach focus the leadership team on pragmatic ways to move the company forward, while also holding leaders accountable for the economic viability of their choices.
This capacity and mindset requires a mix of skills and experiences, including operational and analytical talent and the use of technology to help with sifting through large sets of data to identify critical opportunities. It also requires a commitment to changing the culture of finance and transforming the function to be more inclusive and collaborative.
The finance function needs to be able to respond quickly to operating, investing and financing events. That requires an efficient and scalable tech stack that provides access to relevant financial and key-metric data, and a process for delivering that information to the businesses.
This includes a combination of enterprise resource planning ERP systems that can integrate with other business processes and budgeting and forecasting software that provides a more granular approach to the process. These tools can be augmented with BI and data visualization tools to transform raw data into actionable insights and enable CFOs to better understand the drivers of performance.
A second component is the ability to anticipate capital needs and provide options for achieving the desired level of growth, whether through M&A or organically. This can be done through a variety of methods, from using FP&A capabilities to model possible futures and frame responses to potential competitors’ moves to implementing highly detailed cash flow forecasting processes to determine the amount of working capital tied up in inventory and accounts receivable.
Finally, the finance function needs to be able to respond to disruptions and threats to the company’s profitability. This can be done through a number of techniques, from resizing the company’s sales investments during the COVID-19 crisis to setting up a stage gate for reintroducing them as demand for elective procedures recovers.
In a world of constant change, CFOs need the ability to make rapid decisions with clear and compelling evidence. This requires a mindset that focuses on asking the right questions, framing the options and then delivering the support needed to implement them. It’s a challenge that requires a deeper level of skill, commitment and leadership than ever before.