CFO: Corporate Finance for Executive Leadership

Recent postings for full-time CFOs on job-search sites include an emerging air mobility design and manufacturing company in Massachusetts with fewer than 20 employees and a 94-bed community hospital in Hawaii. This includes responsibility for internal and external financial reporting, stewardship of a company’s assets, and ownership of cash management. Increasingly, the role is more forward-looking and expanding to incorporate strategy and business partnership. The pace of change is fast, organizations are becoming more complex and CFOs are finding themselves in increasingly unfamiliar situations, forced to write the playbook on what makes a great CFO as they go. CFOs tell Gartner that they want to reduce their time with the finance function by 5%, indicating they recognize but can’t yet capture the value of reduced time with the function. CFOs need to increase effectiveness at taking the risks required to deliver long-term growth, and meeting CEO expectations on financial performance. The CFO must report accurate information because many decisions are based on the data they provide.

This also includes communicating the strategy and progress against it to external stakeholders and investors. Look for leadership opportunities and team-building skills through transformation initiatives and major change programs. This will help develop the communication and influencing skills that are necessary for dealing with both internal and external stakeholders. In KPMGs survey, The View from the Top, 45% of CEOs voiced concerns with their CFOs lacking commercial (i.e., non-financial) experience and knowledge while 41% believed they lacked necessary leadership skills. Great CFOs transform the finance business partnering model to provide the proactive, differentiated support the organization needs.

Financial Controller vs CFO

Finally, and perhaps the most important element for me, the increased expectations on the CFO mean increased demands on the whole finance function. The very best CFOs that I observed surrounded themselves with the best talent they could recruit and made a big effort to retain them. They made coaching, mentoring, and leadership development a big priority through all levels of the finance organization. They not only spent time on individual succession planning for key roles in the organization, but also on ensuring the right balance of technical, analytical, and leadership skills within their team.

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• The CFO supervises the finance unit and is the chief financial spokesperson for the organization.
• Kick-start finance strategic planning with Gartner’s guide, which includes a proven template for saving time and communicating the plan effectively.
• Meeting revenue and earnings goals and keeping cash flow stable are clearly in the CFO’s purview.
• The CFO relies on the reporting generated by accounting and the financial controller to advise the CEO and board on the company’s strategic financial direction.
• The EY team’s relationships, approach to talent, history and proven record with Discovery, and our TFO experience, were the key attributes for this win.

An MBA not only solidifies financial acumen, it also provides a strong knowledgebase for strategy and operations. Paul is an international CFO with experience across multinational companies ranging from $250-$900 million in turnover. After roles of increasing responsibility with General Electric and Orica, he now freelances to help companies with his operational finance and transformation experience. He has led simplification projects across geographically disparate finance teams and has worked in the UK, Germany, Belgium, and Hungary. Have finance leaders that are more engaged in assessing technology investments.

Four faces of the CFO

Does your strategic finance plan promote finance initiatives that will drive enterprise productivity, innovation and growth? Kick-start finance strategic planning with Gartner’s guide, which includes a proven template for saving time and communicating the plan effectively. Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee (“DTTL”), its network of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL and each of its member firms are legally separate and independent entities.

• Develop your leadership, strategy and communication capabilities to drive innovation and technological transformation throughout your organisation.
• Accenture highlights how leaders can manage and measure sustainable performance for long-term value and impact.
• The term chief financial officer refers to a senior executive responsible for managing the financial actions of a company.
• And our strong relationship with the EVP and Senior Tax Counsel was critical.
• Modern financial management software helps with informed decision-making, freeing up time to focus on strategy and the critical advisory role.
• In other industries, the CFO is often seen as the second highest-ranking person in the company after theCEO.

A CFO is often the highest financial position and the third-highest position in a company, playing a vital role in the company’s strategic initiatives. Learn how the right BI analytics tools can help organizations leverage information to help reduce operational risks and fine-tune business strategies to get ahead of the competition. Those in the CFO role must also be willing to try new things and take calculated risks to grow the business and improve the overall financial standing of the company. The CFO must also play the role of diplomat with third parties, as they’re required to continually vouch for the financial viability of the company. The CFO is therefore the face of the company’s sustainability to customers, vendors, stakeholders and bankers. For that reason, along with being stewards and operators, today’s CFOs must also be strategists, helping to shape the company’s overall strategy and direction, and act as catalysts, cultivating a financial approach and mindset throughout the company to help other segments of the business perform better.

Return on investment (ROI)

Leadership skills that enable them to assemble a successful finance and accounting team. CFOs understand at what point a company needs to add, for example, a tax specialist and will define roles and assign responsibilities. Although private companies are required to file financial reports with the SEC only if they have $10 million or more in assets and 500 or more shareholders, many businesses create these statements anyway so they’re available should the company seek a bank loan or venture capital or equity funding. CFOs are captains of a team that covers both accounting and finance and consists of senior leaders, such as controllers and VPs of finance, and operational staff — accountants, bookkeepers, tax specialists, data analysts. Depending on corporate structure, the CEO may be responsible for all aspects of a company’s operational and fiscal health, or a president may share some duties. The CEO is the official face and voice of the company to press and analysts, the general public and, if applicable, the board of directors. The CFO role has emerged from focusing on compliance and quality control to business planning and process changes, and they are a strategic partner to the CEO.

But don’t forget that part-time/fractional and virtual CFO-as-a-service offerings are available. CFOs are accountable to both the organization and various regulatory entities and authorities, including the Securities and Exchange Commission in publicly held companies. They are well-versed in both generally accepted accounting principles and state and federal regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Finance directors — also called vice presidents of finance — have similar responsibilities to a CFO, but they are generally not part of the top executive team. Those in this position typically oversee the organization’s financial operations and report to the CFO. The agency CFO delivers timely, accurate, and reliable financial information to decision makers through efficient and effective financial systems and business processes, fosters effective stewardship of public funds, and safeguards fiscal integrity through effective internal controls. The CFO ensures compliance with federal financial integrity legislation, including the CFO Act.

Responsibilities

Yes, finance chiefs need to ensure that they and the management team have timely data to support decisions. But strategic planning and collaboration across all parts of the business are what drive success. The CFO’s role has evolved tremendously over the last several decades, expanding beyond reporting and compliance to include business strategy and digital transformation. The main responsibilities in the past were to reduce costs, optimize finance processes, and “keep score” by gathering data, running reports, and summarizing data. But CFOs now focus on supporting business model transformation—not just optimizing finance processes—but automating them. They report directly to the CEO and have a fiduciary responsibility to the Board of Directors and shareholders.

The expertise of https://accounting-services.net/s makes them valuable to organizations across nearly every industry. The manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, IT, and construction industries all prize the skills CFOs provide. With the rising digitalization of finance, CFOs are now required to focus their efforts on leveraging available relevant technology, such as data analytics and automation, to gain a competitive advantage for their companies. There is a clear international mandate for climate-finance pursuant to the Paris Agreement for both governments and business leaders.

How Gartner Supports New CFOs

While hiring an experienced CFO is an investment, the return can be significant. Organizations may have professionals overseeing some or all of these roles and reporting to the CFO. Corporate hierarchy refers to the arrangement of individuals within a corporation according to power, status, and job function. The offers that appear in this table are from partnerships from which Investopedia receives compensation.

To succeed, CFOs will have to be champions and stewards of digital technology. CFOs must adapt to new technology and be at the forefront of ERP implementations and cloud-based solutions.

The mission of the Office of the Treasury is to effectively, timely and accurately collect and record all taxes, special assessments, fees and other monies received by the City of Detroit. He is a keen sportsman and won the junior national rifle shooting championship in India at the age of 18. He also won several times at the senior level in India in subsequent years, as well as multiple competitions in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Abhijit has a strong track record of delivering outstanding value to shareholders, partners, customers and employees and is passionate about driving profitable growth, while focusing on agile and cost-efficient operations. The following steps chart a path for gaining the education, experience, and certifications to secure a CFO position.

Multinational organizations need access to real-time global data that offers clear insights into opportunities, obligations and risks. The EY Global Tax Platform redefines how tax operates, offering an innovative end-to-end platform that supports all your tax business solutions. Regulators are ever asking for more by expanding the scope of compliance requirements and shifting policy and regulation. At the same time technology is changing the rules of the game, digitizing processes and enabling companies to transform their processes, analysis and reporting. We help you capitalize on opportunities to drive profitable growth, rethink organizational structure and reap the potential of information. Today, finance functions have to look at how the whole organization — and beyond — impacts the bottom line. For publicly traded companies in the United States, the CFO is ultimately held responsible for ensuring that the quarterly and annual financial statements are produced in an accurate, nonfraudulent manner to the U.S.

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The CFO also works with other senior managers and is a vital participant in a company’s overall success, especially when it comes to the long run. For instance, when the marketing department wants to launch a new campaign, the CFO may help to ensure the campaign is feasible or give input on the funds available for the campaign. The controller role is a natural progression from accountant, but CFO is not necessarily a natural progression from controller, wrote Ben Paramore, CFO at Great Southern Wood Preserving, on the website Proformative, an online community for finance professionals. Spending a certain number of years as a controller doesn’t necessarily lead to a promotion to CFO — though it could lead to a promotion to finance director.