The many faces of a modern CFO
"Certainly, my primary role as the Chief Financial Officer at ThinCats is to optimise the financial performance of the company. This includes ensuring accurate financial reporting and taxation, maintaining liquidity, assessing return on investment, and managing potential risks.
But in the two decades that I’ve been in finance, the CFO’s role has evolved considerably. Today, it is so much broader than its ‘financial’ title suggests, and this new multi-faceted role reflects the increasingly complex challenges facing our organisations.
As well as being a financial gatekeeper, the modern CFO must be a business planner, a catalyst for innovation and growth within a company, and an essential part of the strategic decision-making team"
Guardian
The traditional responsibilities of a CFO are still fundamental to the role. The CFO is responsible for preserving the assets of the organisation by minimising risk and ensuring all reports and accounts are accurate and well-balanced. Then communicating these positions to investors, analysts, and the board. Even these statutory obligations have ramped up over recent years, however, with increased regulatory scrutiny and demands for greater transparency from stakeholders.
Companies are increasingly held accountable, not only for their financial performance, but also for their adherence to non-financial criteria such as Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). As CFO, I am actively involved in ESG and CSR projects and decision-making, as well as driving their application across the business.
The CFO must have the right infrastructure in place to manage all these increased responsibilities, running a tight finance operation that is efficient and effective will always be central.
Business planner
A good CFO develops guidance based not only on past reports and performance but on a forward-looking analysis that encompasses all important variables, both internal and external – from systems and processes to marketplace analysis, supply chain dynamics, and vendor relationships.
As a key member of the C-suite, the CFO should have a clear overarching vision of where the organisation wants to be as well as a deep understanding of all the components needed to get there. They need to be able to set actionable goals that are realistic in the context of all these different drivers of business performance. This capability to connect key relationships that are pertinent to an organisation’s financial functions defines the modern CFO.
Catalyst
CFOs can be powerful agents of change within a company. By instilling a financial framework and mindset throughout the organisation, they can ensure that all areas have a clear and transparent understanding of how their business unit and delivery impacts overall financial success.
With ultimate control over how money is spent, they can introduce process improvements and business initiatives that add real value - such as achieving cost reductions, streamlining procurement processes, and leveraging platforms to drive efficiency.
While in the past, the CFO’s role could be considered largely reactive, today, being proactive is a given. This awareness and alertness to opportunities - previously focused on financial results - must now be much broader, especially when it comes to emerging technologies. Many finance functions that were formerly manually intensive, such as credit management and payroll, are now largely automated. This requires CFOs to be more involved with tech services and solutions than ever before. Leveraging the right offerings can be crucial to business success.
Strategic support
In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business environment, CFOs are playing an important strategic role in the overall business. With international opportunities and many new and ever-increasing sources of capital, they must have firm grasp on how each can benefit within their agreed risk parameters.
Visible leader
CFOs are no longer tied to their desk crunching the numbers but out in the business helping colleagues understand the impact their own business units, and individual performance, has on the wider group.
A modern CFO should also be agile in their decision-making, recognising that all levels of business can be change agents and influence decisions and policy shifts, especially financial ones.
Rajeev Raichura
