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Archives for November 2015

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CFO Buzz – week ending November 20, 2015

CFO BuzzCFO Buzz is a news feature capturing top stories affecting CFOs. This feature is published Fridays so that CFOs can gain perspective over the weekend, allowing them to challenge themselves and think about how to improve their lives, careers and companies.

1) CFO Decision Making – Gut Feel or Analytics?

CFOs are called upon daily to make decisions. The modern CFO who has invested in access to data and proper analytics is able to make decisions based on the facts or trends, while the CFO who does not have this ready access to this information is making decisions based on a feeling. CFOs need to move towards decision making based on information. How do you make decisions?

Are CFOs Relying on Gut Instinct Too Much? – C-Suite UK

How ‘Data-Driven’ CFOs are Leading the C-Suite – CFO.com

2) CFOs can Impact HR

Finance and HR are both important support functions in an organization. I find that there is always work to be done to improve the relationship and the impact both have on the organization by work. Here are 4 tips for Finance to immediately improve HR.

CFOs can immediately improve HR with these 4 simple changes – Business Insider

3) More Strategy, Less Spreadsheets

How does the CFO move beyond the traditional number-crunching and have an impact across the organization in areas of strategy, people and culture? By spending more time across and outside the organization as listeners and advisors. Remember, if you are being hired just to manage the numbers, you are not adding value.

The New CFO: Performance and Culture Champion – Forbes

4) Why Interim CEOs are not good for your business

CFOs can find themselves having to work with an interim CEO. When this happens, it is important to be aware of the potential biases and challenges that exist when your boss is not committed for the long term. What has been your experience?

Interim CEOs Are Prone to Inflating Earnings – CFO.com

5) CFOs called on to integrate major acquisitions

This interview with Mark McCollum of Haliburton allows us to appreciate some of the challenges he faced when his company acquired their largest competitor, Baker Hughes. There are some good lessons shared here.

CFO as Chief Integration Officer: Mark McCollum of Halliburton – Deloitte Wall Street Journal

 

Some of Samuel’s other CFO stuff this week

CFO Moves – Moves across the USA – week ending November 13, 2015

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CFO Buzz – week ending November 13, 2015

CFO BuzzCFO Buzz is a news feature capturing top stories affecting CFOs. This feature is published Fridays so that CFOs can gain perspective over the weekend, allowing them to challenge themselves and think about how to improve their lives, careers and companies.

1) 9 Key Elements for CFO Communications

A big part of a CFOs responsibility is to communicate properly with various internal and external stakeholders. It is not enough just to share information with others, but communication is a two way street, allowing you to get the information you need to manage expectations and add value. Deloitte CFO Insights discusses nine key elements for successful CFO Communications. How many of these elements do you do? How many of them do you do well?

Creating an effective communications program – Deloitte CFO Insights

2) What should a Director get paid?

This article spoke to me, specifically because a CFO of mine asked me this very question recently. While a lot of information on executive compensation is available, director compensation is difficult to compare. It is easier to compare executives working full time with similar responsibilities in companies that are in similar industries and similar sizes. The biggest challenge for comparing director compensation is that the time spent and risk involved can vary significantly. This article is worth the read.

How Much to Pay a Director? There’s No Clear Answer – New York Times

3) Is it worth cutting out office snacks?

We have seen or heard of companies that cut office snacks and drinks to staff when under budgetary pressure. While the dollar value of the cost can easily be quantified, the negative impact on employee productivity and goodwill may be significant. As CFO, have you cut these costs? Did the cost savings outweigh the impact?

Why Getting Rid of Free Office Snacks Doesn’t Come Cheap – Bloomberg

4) Should your children become Accountants?

If the future of accounting will be automated and based on artificial intelligence, maybe recommending that your children become accountants is not a good idea. While I personally believe there will continue to be room for added value from people with real intelligence in accounting and finance, the perspective is worth considering.

Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up To Be Accountants – Forbes

5) Do CFOs care just about the numbers?

Mark Garrett, CFO at Adobe, shares his perspective on the importance of people to the CFO. Garrett thankfully takes the position that all business decisions impact people, and even tough decisions need to take the people impact into account. I guess CFOs are human after all.

Why People Matter to a CFO – Adobe Blog

Some of Samuel’s other CFO stuff this week

CFO Moves – Moves across the USA – week ending November 6, 2015

 

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CFO Buzz – week ending November 6, 2015

CFO BuzzCFO Buzz is a news feature capturing top stories affecting CFOs. This feature is published Fridays so that CFOs can gain perspective over the weekend, allowing them to challenge themselves and think about how to improve their lives, careers and companies.

1) More CFOs are losing their best talent

This article is not Finance specific, but it does discuss a trend I hear about more and more from my CFOs – they are losing their best talent. CFOs are responsible to ensure that they put the right efforts in place to build the best finance team possible and keep the best talent. Retention is way cheaper than recruitment.

One Downside of an Up Economy: Employee Turnover – New York Times

2) Talent Development – Investment or Cost?

With so much work to get done, how can the justification be made for spending money and time on developing talent? This article, written by a former CFO, makes the case that spending on developing talent is an excellent investment, and helps CFOs understand their role in linking talent strategy with organizational strategy.

Finding the Right Talent for Projects: A Gift that Keeps on Giving – CFO.com

3) Group CFOs and Divisional CFOs – Partners in Success?

Jeff Thomson, president and CEO of the IMA, interviews the new CFO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise on the value of CFOs working together in a matrix organization.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise CFO On How Divisional And Group Finance Chiefs Partner For Success – Forbes

4) The Risks of M&A to the CFO

M&A activity continues to be a significant part of the purview of the CFO. This article, while discussing the External Auditor issues relating to M&A, should be considered a gentle reminder to CFOs with M&A activity under their responsibility. While the CEO is more likely to be involved in the deal making, the CFO needs to not only support the deal while it’s happening, she needs to remember that there is A LOT of work post-merger that can add significant risks to Finance, as well as the career of the CFO. Beware.

Rise in M&A Deals Key Factor in Audit Deficiencies – AccountingWeb

5) CFO / CEO Collaboration

This article refers to an EY study discussing where CFOs collaborate with their CEOs, and areas for improvement. Worth reading and comparing to your situation.

How CFOs can support the transformation to a digital business model – CGMA Magazine

 

Some of Samuel’s other CFO stuff this week

CFO Moves – Moves across the USA – week ending October 30, 2015

5 CFO Opportunities for the Future of Finance

Good news CFOs: The Future of Finance Looks Bright (But Only if you Plan and Act)

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5 CFO Opportunities for the Future of Finance

Earlier this week I shared a new research report by CFO Publishing sponsored by SAP with some insights on the Future of Finance.

Thack Brown is general manager and global head of Line-of-Business Finance at SAP, and I had the opportunity to speak with him about the report. I have had the opportunity to speak with Thack numerous times over the years, including for my book, and I continue to find his perspectives and insights relevant, useful and enjoyable.

I would like to share 5 points that Thack shared with me that I thought CFOs should hear, listen to, and think about further. (This is an excerpt from my conversation with Thack and has been edited for clarity).

1) This is a platform play at the end of the day.

Companies in the general market are currently revaluating their platforms, their ERP, their financial systems, all of that stack, and saying “it’s all changing”. It’s time for me to place the next bet that will be my platform for the next 10-15 years.

2) Know that the CFO opportunity is a big one.

CFOs need to be ready to make the step out of the finance field, into a more comprehensive involvement understanding of the entire workings of the company. CFOs need to expand their role and take on more responsibilities.

3) You are not alone.

Finance professionals are usually challenged when it comes to networking. We tend to be so overworked and focused on our profession that sometimes we can fall into that trap of believing that our problems are only our problems. Talk to your peers. Network, brainstorm and problem solve. This is a valuable resource and should not be overlooked.

4) The next big thing.

© CFO PUBLISHING LLC

Automation. This has been talked about in the finance world forever. The need to move more effort out of the back office and automate it so you can spend more time in the front office. Move past the shared services environment to full automation. The back office of the future will be a just a few highly skilled experts handling, enabling and ultimately evolving the automation.

5) Advice to midsize companies and their CFOs.

Mid-size companies need to keep an eye on the technology transformations of automation and simplification, because this may be not their opportunity to catch up the big boys, but actually leap-frog them entirely. As an example, they could skip the entire shared services phase.

So, CFOs, what do you think?

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Good news CFOs: The Future of Finance Looks Bright (But Only if you Plan and Act)

A new research report released today by CFO Research and sponsored by SAP shows that while Finance has improved a lot over the past years, there is plenty of opportunity to Finance to deliver more value to the organization.

The report, Thriving in the Digital Economy: Four Reasons Why Finance Is Excited About the Future has four key findings that CFOs, senior finance executives and board members will find of significant interest:

Finance professionals are embracing their influence in their enterprises—and looking forward to a bright future as their profession evolves.

The good news is that finance professionals are more influential than ever in their organization, and have opportunities to go beyond core traditional areas of ‘old’ finance. The biggest challenge with this opportunity comes from ensuring that talent with leadership potential in finance can grow beyond the core additional areas.

© CFO PUBLISHING LLC

© CFO PUBLISHING LLC

The organizational scope of the finance function—already broad— continues to expand to encompass risk management, IT, M&A, and other key functions.

Again, as Finance becomes the central organizational address for all administrative and support functions within an organization, can the talent planning match this need?

Finance teams will be challenged to fulfill their core performance management mandate in the face of rapid change and greater business complexity.

High value-add within finance can only happen with the right people, processes and technologies in place, especially as business gets more complex and change continues at a faster pace.

Finance professionals see the rising wave of digitalization and automation as the key to their ability to partner with the business to manage performance.

In a conversation with Thack Brown, general manager and global head of Line-of-Business Finance at SAP, he said that the impact of technology opportunities (digitization and automation) will radically change how the transactional part of finance is being managed, even by those following current best practices.

Stay tuned as I will be sharing parts of my interview with Thack Brown. The insights he offered were fascinating, and combined with this report, provides excellent food for thought for the CFO who is looking to be the best business partner possible to their organization.

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