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June 13, 2017 By Samuel Dergel Leave a Comment

What Makes a Great Modern CFO?

Being a great CFO is about much more than just looking at the numbers.

Accounting may be a technical field, but the modern finance department cannot thrive on technical skills alone. Every client I speak with is adamant about this when looking to make a hire: the best CFOs don’t just “get” the numbers, they are also great leaders and strategic thinkers.

I asked a number of advisors which qualities distinguish the best CFOs when writing my Guide to CFO Success, and they narrowed these down to three.

TABLE 1.1 What Is and What Is Not a CFO?

What a CFO is not	What a CFO is
Accountant	Strategic
Bean counter	Leader
Number cruncher	Advisor

1. The Strategist

The finance department has been playing more of a partnership role in the organization, and CEOs are increasingly looking to their finance leaders to help drive wider business strategies. It is not enough to simply report on performance at regular intervals; CFOs need to make decisions and shape their action plans based on the company’s ambitions.

What’s more, as the keeper of all the company’s data with a view of every department’s objectives and performance, CFOs must also step up and play an active role in refining and aligning business strategies.

2. The Business Leader

As the CFO steps out from the shadow of the finance department and sits at the right hand of the CEO, they are becoming a true business leader in addition to leading their teams. I liken the CFO’s knowledge to Solomon-like wisdom that comes from years of experience, finely-tuned business acumen and a deep understanding of the number behind sound business decisions.

With the finance department as a whole shifting away from traditional accounting, CFOs also need to lead by example while broadening their team’s skillset. Versatility is the hallmark of today’s finance professional and CFOs need to find ways of attracting and hiring people that will help strengthen the finance department’s position in the business.

3. The Resident Advisor

Perhaps the biggest change in terms of the CFO’s role in business today is that their advice is not only valued—it is necessary.

Businesses are currently dealing with a wave of disruptive competitors and fast-changing customer expectations, while also managing a global talent shortage and volatile financial conditions. The wisdom and experience of finance leaders makes them indispensable in the boardroom as companies look to tackle one of the most uncertain economic periods in decades.

As part of this, CFOs also need to be able to sell their ideas. It is one thing to develop a robust and well thought-out plan to help the business tackle its challenges, but unless CFOs can articulate their ideas to non-finance experts these plans may never get off the ground.

A quick word on skills

A strong background in finance principles is essential to any CFO. A seasoned finance professional will have developed a large bag of tricks over the years that make them ideally suited to managing complex numerical issues.

However, many of these skills won’t differentiate CFOs from their colleagues with similar backgrounds. It is business consultancy skills such as strategic thinking, team management, and inter-departmental coordination that will set the best finance leaders apart and help them establish the finance department as the strategic core of the business.

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This blog was originally published in Oracle’s Modern Finance Blog.

July 6, 2016 By Samuel Dergel 3 Comments

CFO as Chief Growth Officer?

What exactly is the role of the CFO anyway?

In my book, Guide to CFO Success, my first chapter discusses what a Chief Financial Officer is. I say that the CFO needs to be a Strategist, Leader and Advisor, and those that act as such are able to become the business leader their company needs.

My perspective is not the only perspective on this topic. Those that follow the continuing discussion in print and online about the Chief Financial Officer see numerous perspectives in blogs, whitepapers and articles about what the CFO really is.

One whitepaper I came across recently was an EXL whitepaper entitled Chief Growth Officer: A new role for today’s CFO. The whitepaper was of interest to me because it discussed how the head of finance, which in many organizations has been very compliance oriented, can (and should) make the transition to a more strategic role. The paper describes the idea of CFO as

Click to download larger graphic

…a “Chief Growth Officer”, a newer, more sharply focused evolution of the notion of the CFO as a “strategic partner” to the business.

The paper also includes an infographic detailing the difference between the “Traditional CFO” and the “Modern CFO”

For those with an interest in the evolution of the Chief Financial Officer, this paper offers some worthy insights on how CFOs can move beyond the traditional and lead growth in their organization.

To gain a better perspective on the CFO as “Chief Growth Officer”, I spoke with Vince Sparrow, CPA & CGMA, VP and Client Executive at EXL.

Samuel: Why is Growth so important for the CFO?

Vince: Growth is important for the CFO because it’s important to CEOs, boards and investors. CFOs who help drive the strategies that create growth not only increase shareholder value they also differentiate themselves as active partners to the CEO and the business. CFOs’ access to a broad cross section of data and the analytical skills with respect to finding and interpreting that data can make the difference in carving out new or more profitable businesses. Doing this quickly and efficiently requires utilization of new cloud and automation tools.

Samuel: Why do some CFOs miss the opportunity to help grow their business?

Vince: Some CFOs miss the broader opportunity because they are stuck in the older model as the organization’s scorekeeper and, a bit more advanced, as more passive advisor to the business. They may also spend so much time in gathering and validating information that they lose out on the opportunity to truly understand the implications in the patterns in the data – including external macroeconomic and political data.

What are your thoughts about CFOs being organizational leaders for continued growth in their organization?

August 12, 2015 By Samuel Dergel 2 Comments

A CFO Success Story: Aidan Cullen, CFO of CliQr

Aidan Cullen, CFO of CliQr

The following is from an interview with Aidan Cullen, recently hired as CFO of CliQr, as announced in CFO Moves. This interview was edited for clarity.

What has helped you become a successful CFO over the years?

I’ve always been a long term planner and thinker. I started my career in public accounting getting the fundamentals. I then went into internal audit consciously thinking about where I need to go for my success. That gave me an understanding of what’s underneath the hood of a company. From there I started to specialize in the functional roles and business partnerships, so I went to engineering and managed an engineering group worth about 120 million dollars. After that, I went into another company and managed a sales organization and was a business partner for sales services and support.

When you start to get into a specialized business like engineering, you look at all the portfolios and investments and really begin to understand how things roll in a company. Similarly, with sales you start to understand what incentivizes salespeople, what motivates them and how you get the most productivity out of them. Then you become more of a generalist and you start to move into and become more eligible for a CFO role. At that point you really have the depth to be able to go down a thousand feet and then come back up specifically when you’re dealing with the executive level management.

Quick Takes from Aidan on…

Growing from Controller to CFO:
A lot of us are very technically and operationally qualified and the next part of that is the chemistry and the synergy that you have with the executive team.

How to move upwards and onwards:
If you build up and broaden your experience and your accomplishments and consistently perform… I think that will open any door.

Networking and a new job:
We spend so much time trying to build a network and then when we get into a new job we tend to forget about that network.

Why CFO Peer Groups are important:
It’s very important to keep a close check on what challenges other CFOs face in the market these days.

Building your network:
You should value your network and you should always think about building and expanding on your experiences.

You went from an engineering organization to a sales organization, both of which have very different requirements and very different world views. How did you transition at an early age to those perspectives? What did you learn from that?

I suppose I was just fortunate. I got in to the engineering role and the engineering VP at that stage got promoted to the general manager of a business unit that had a value of $1.7 billion dollars. So I was fortunate to move in with the VP and become the general manager’s number one finance person – the CFO. When I moved into the sales company, I specifically moved in as the number two. They didn’t have a CFO at the time and I moved in with the COO. The main concerns they had, operationally in the company, were in getting the financials restated due to the software changes that were going on, specifically around revenue recognition. In the company that I joined, several of the competing companies had their financial statements restated. Fortunately, because of my operational background in external audits and looking at the business side of things, I was able to take that role on and I spent a good year really reengineering the sales organization – specifically from an operational perspective. So that was just a bit of fortune and I just stepped up to the role. And when you actually have a bit of experience behind you, it’s nice to have that exciting challenge.

I’ve seen that a lot of CFOs who – while they were certainly smart – were at the right place at the right time. What was it about you that helped you get to that first CFO role?

I think it’s my assertiveness. It’s a little bit of planning and being willing to step up – having the energy level to step up to the next level and perform. As you start to get in, a lot of us are very technically and operationally qualified and the next part of that is the chemistry and the synergy that you have with the executive team and also with the CEO. It’s that business partnership that makes it all gel together.

What were some challenges you faced when you and the CEO thought differently? What have you done in your career that has made that CFO/CEO relationship work?

I think there are a few you areas that I would look at. The first that comes to mind is the ability to scale a company from, say, a 20 million dollar company to a 100 million dollar company. There are certain roads and paths to take. You would first look at the financial portfolios system or the ERP system and ask: which is the best one to scale? What are the key resources that you need to have? Each time you have to make some decision it impacts the business and may impact the CEO and executive team. So they’re truly critical decisions because they have a long term impact. That’s more the long term side of it.

On the operational side, I have the skills that I need from a sales operation perspective that I can use to go underneath the sales organization and understand the key issues associated with productivity, the sales model, the pricing and so forth. Because of this, sometimes the CEO or the VP of Sales do not see eye to eye with me. Through my perspective on certain things, I can justify it from the numbers, from looking at the facts, looking at trends, building them out and being able to start to perfect models and sales projections. Because of this, I started to gain respect from my peers and especially the CEO and then I moved forward and it got better. Everything started to get better.

What can you share about the process that moved you forward to your new role?

I think the key is networking. If you build up and broaden your experience and your accomplishments and consistently perform – especially in the CFO capacity – I think that will open any door. I think that’s the key to success. In my case, I’ve worked in many companies and I’ve met a lot of VCs and board members. I consistently keep in contact with them and these doors remain opened and the friendship and partnership are there.

One of the VCs on the board here opened up the door for me and connected me with CliQr. From there it just took the normal steps to get the position. I have kept in contact with all the top financial recruiters over the years – whether I am looking for an opportunity or not. If I can touch base, even if it’s only once a year, I’ll try to keep an eye on them and say hello. We spend so much time trying to build a network and then when we get into a new job we tend to forget about that network. And it doesn’t take much to maintain these relationships.

What tool do you use to ensure that you stay in front of everyone you want to stay in front of on a regular basis?

That’s a difficult one. I don’t have any specific tool. I kind of identify it and put it in my calendar on a quarterly basis. I do like sports, though. I tend to see if I can play golf with some of the executives. I might go to an event with them. Some of the banks that I deal with invite me out. For example, one of the financial recruiters is having an event here and it’s typically at an event like that where I catch up with my peers in the industry and have a drink and socialize.

Another process that has worked for me in the past is I will meet with CFOs on a semi-annual basis.We go to lunch and without getting into numbers we discuss the business process and we go into networking. The world of finance changes an awful lot. Technology changes and business and financial market changes. It’s very important to keep a close check on what challenges other CFOs face in the market these days. I enjoy that. We spend time together sitting around the table and then we reconvene in another six months’ time. It’s a great forum for keeping pace with what’s going on in the markets.

What are you excited about joining CliQr?

CliQr represents a fundamental shift in the IT market. We’ve seen the internet bring a lot of change. It has changed almost everything. The cloud is today’s internet in my mind. It has the ability to change everything about the way business interacts with information technology. CliQr is pivotal in this change. It plays a major role. It’s a transformation from the old rigid data centers to today’s desire to logically place applications across diverse environments and include the data centers across private and public clouds all in one place. This is what CliQr does. In my mind, the market’s real, the product is very very real and we’ve got really smart investors in the company (like Google Ventures and Foundation Capital -to name a couple). My colleagues here are very smart. It’s a nice working environment. To me, these are all key ingredients to success.

What are some of your objectives to help the company along and make a bigger impact in its success?

The major one is to scale the company. CliQr is at the point where it has gone through with a Series C and financing and we’re at that stage of growth. The next stage is global expansion and building out the enterprise and the sales into the various geographic regions. Those are the major challenges and in confronting them I bring in head counts and business processes. I did the same thing at Gigamon, where I expanded and brought in a new ERP system for a manufacturing company and broadened the sales geographic regions.

Where do you hope to take this?

I think one would always love to take it to IPO. Companies are not sold now, they are bought. So the strategic intention is to build this up to a company that can go IPO. I have not brought a company to an IPO process yet. I’ve filed an F1, but I’ve never been on the other side as a public CFO.

What advice would you give people trying to build themselves up on a path to success as CFO?

You should value your network and you should always think about building and expanding on your experiences. Try to look at the end of every year and assure that you’ve added some accomplishments to your resume or background. I think it’s important to meet regularly and get a pulse check with your peers to see if you’re keeping touch with how things are working out. Specifically, your skill set versus the market. Finally, I think it’s good to follow smart money. These days we’ve got some super VCs in the Valley. They do an amazing job and when you can actually get a line through to these VCs, they truly do mitigate the risk that we have as CFOs. In looking at opportunities, these are the people you should start to follow.

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A CFO Success Story is a feature of Samuel’s CFO Blog, where Samuel Dergel follows up on his book, Guide to CFO Success, speaking with CFOs featured in CFO Moves, Samuel’s popular and comprehensive weekly report on CFO Movement across the USA.

June 30, 2015 By Samuel Dergel 2 Comments

A CFO Success Story: Christine Russell, CFO of UniPixel

Christine Russell, CFO of UniPixel

The following is from an interview with Christine Russell, recently hired as CFO of UniPixel, as announced in CFO Moves. This interview was edited for clarity.

SD: Congratulations on your move to UniPixel. What are you excited about in your new role?

CR: I have been a Silicon Valley CFO for 30+ years and I’ve been involved in all kinds of different technologies. I’ve worked in many different industries, but there is a fundamental formula consisting of three elements for success that I’ve found in my companies and if they have this formula to start with, then they are going to meet with success.

First, the company really needs to be serving a large market (in the multi-billions) and that way in your growth cycle if you’re capturing only 10% of market share, you’re still a company with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. I’ve never enjoyed going to companies that are targeting a niche market where you don’t need 80% of the market and you’re a 200 million dollar company and there’s nowhere to go from there.

The second criteria is the product needs to be something that’s really useful and can be differentiated in the market. It can be either technological advantages, cost advantages, usability or some combination of these. It has to be something that people really need, and not something that we need to go out and convince everyone they need. Finally, the CEO needs to be a leader – somebody thoughtful, decisive, and with a bias for action. They need to have an impeccable reputation in the industry. Someone I’m really proud to present to investors and who customers can stand beside. To me, UniPixel has all of these elements – a multi-billion dollar addressable market in touch screen devices that have both technological and cost advantages and a CEO with a deep background in display and optical and who has run public companies before with great success.

Quick Takes from Christine on…
The formula for a great company:
1) Serves a large market.
2) Creates a useful and differentiated product.
3) Has a really well-rounded CEO.

Networking: Successful networking means making lifelong friends and giving back.

Successful Female CFOs: Executives need to make their career a priority. There is no such thing as balance. It’s a compromise. It’s what you choose to do with your life.

Females on Boards: Recruit your board by individual, irrespective of race, sex, country of origin. Hire the best for the board. Period.

Managing your Board: Over-communication and transparency creates trust.

The Best CEOs for CFOs: Confident CEOs are able to share their powerbase with the CFO and treat them as a trusted partner.

Advice to up-and-coming female CFOs: Be absolutely fearless. Brainstorm with your other executives, and shut up and listen – you will learn a lot.

SD: How do CFOs get matched with great companies? What did you do to get to this company?

CR: I was approached for the UniPixel opportunity by a colleague who I knew in Silicon Valley for many years. He introduced me to the CEO, Jeff Hawthorne, and told me that he had worked with Jeff before and that he was an excellent and effective CEO. He told me that Jeff was respected for his deep knowledge in the display and optical industry. So a personal recommendation is extremely valuable. Always.

The way I joined my prior company was through a board member who was a committee chair who I knew from professional organizations. So again, it’s about who you know.

SD: How did you become so well networked?

CR: First of all, because I don’t really like the concept of networking, I think of people as friends. Friends help one another. I’ll tell you a little story about how I came to know some of these people, especially the gentleman who recommended me at Vendavo: I belong to a professional organization called Financial Executives International and I always enjoyed attending the Silicon Valley meetings. One day they approached me and asked if I would be willing to become the president of the organization. I was doing an IPO for a company at the time so I said I was too busy. I was set straight by one of my corporate outside lawyers. He looked at me and asked if I enjoyed going to the organization and if I found it helpful. So I said oh yeah, the people are wonderful. And he said, so when do you give back? I left his office and I immediately called up the board and told them I would accept the position. I have no idea how I did that while I was doing an IPO, but I did it, and then those people went on to become very good friends of mine and they really helped me. They help you and you help them.

SD: Most Senior Finance Executives don’t do enough networking.

CR: No they don’t, and I think they’re missing an opportunity to meet people who can be a lifetime friend and find out about opportunities that go both ways. They look out for you and you look out for them. And I will say that executive recruiting certainly has its own place. A search firm located me through my LinkedIn profile for a previous position that I held at Evans Analytical Group.

SD: If you look at the percentage of women at the CFO level, it’s not representative of the number of females in finance. What is your take on that?

CR: First of all, I think there are more women in HR and finance than there are in many other positions. I think that you have to have a certain amount of ambition and time that you’re willing to devote away from your family if you want to see the executive staff table. I was once on a panel where one of the panelists got a question asking a woman how she balanced her work and home life. Her response was you don’t. She devoted a lot of time to her work life at the expense of her home life. There is no such thing as balance. It’s a compromise. It’s what you choose to do with your life.

SD: What are your thoughts on the social discussion about females on boards?

CR: I’ve always thought that you should recruit your board by individual, irrespective of race, sex, country of origin, or anything that is unrelated to finding the best people you can who will accelerate your business. I know I’m going against the grain by saying that, but I think that a board member has to be highly qualified to be a board member. Especially in these times of challenges and activist investors. You need to have the very best qualified individual you can find.

SD: How have you as CFO managed to get the best relationship possible with the board that you had at various companies throughout your career?

CR: I have learned to over-communicate with the board. I will communicate very regularly and frequently and I wait for people to tell me “Christine, quit calling me!” Then I know that I’ve done enough communicating. I’m very transparent with them if there are problems or issues. If there is anything they don’t like about something, they can talk to me about it. But over-communication and transparency create trust.

SD: Some CFOs have said that the CEO can sometimes get in the way of effective communication with the board. What’s your take on that?

CR: I think that’s a valid comment. Just as there are all kinds of personalities of people in the world, there’s all kinds of personalities of CEOs. Some are very transparent and some are very controlling, but you’re not going to have someone become CEO if they don’t have a controlling personality. Some are more concerned about protecting their relationship with the board and trying to keep that relationship exclusive, seeing as it’s about power. More confident CEOs are able to share that powerbase with the CFO and treat them as a trusted partner.

SD: Where do you get the energy for all of the many accomplishments you have had in your career?

CR: I don’t know what else to do! I don’t have hobbies, I don’t play an instrument, and I can’t sing or dance… I’m a working cat! That’s what I do. And I’m good at it and I think as long as I have the ability to contribute and help create jobs, companies and ROI for investors, I’m going to keep doing it.

SD: What advice would you give to a young female CFO?

CR: I would say that you have to be absolutely fearless. One of the things that I did wrong earlier in my career was I thought I had all of the answers, but if you don’t get buy-in with some of the other members of the executive staff, it doesn’t really matter. Enter in the brainstorming conversations with the executives. Ask for everyone’s ideas, no matter how crazy those ideas may be. Create a common mind rather than coming in with all of the answers. Shut up and ask others what they think!

SD: What are you most excited about in your new role?

CR: I’m really excited about this being a pivotal time for UniPixel. We just acquired the Atmel touch film technology and the production facility in Colorado Springs. We are combining the best aspects of the UniPixel technology that we worked on with Kodak and the Atmel technology to come up with something that is more than just one plus one. I’m also very excited about the CEO I’m working with. The number of people he knows and who greeted him at a recent information display convention in San Jose was very heartening for me.

I recently visited the newly acquired Colorado Springs facility and the energy level there is amazing. These people are now able to work with a much smaller, more nimble and flexible company rather than being under a small vision of a large company. The energy level there is still like a start-up.

SD: What is the top thing you need to accomplish in this new phase of the company?

CR: Finance and admin are thinly staffed. I have to get comfortable with a minimum amount of support and identify the positions that I need to upgrade, as well as bringing in proper software and processes for finance. Even though that’s a lot of work, it’s an advantage because you’re not inheriting someone else’s ideas for a business.

SD: Is there something that you feel you would like to tell the CFOs who read this blog?

CR: Stick together! Form groups and partnerships. Join professional organizations and become a cohesive group so that if you’re ever in a bind –finding yourself in need of a boilerplate template for a sales commission plan for staff delivered software, for example – you can pick up the phone, email or text another CFO and ask if they have ever dealt with something similar. Those kinds of professional contacts and friendships are amazingly helpful and allow you to shortcut so many of the things that you would otherwise be handling alone.

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June 26, 2014 By Samuel Dergel 5 Comments

What a CFO should read every day

CFOs are busy people.

Yet, to be the best CFO they can be, they need to be on top of items that matter to them and the company they work for.

Having written a book targeting the Chief Financial Officer, I am learning a lot about the reading habits of these senior finance executives. Out of all the media that is available today, email is still the most comfortable media for the CFO. So, to keep on top of the important topics in the CFO world, senior finance executives should get a daily update of relevant news and articles. Daily News

Here are my recommendations of emails that a CFO should receive daily.

FEI Daily– brought to you by Financial Executives International, this compendium started this year and points to articles on the web that are relevant to the CFO, as well as fresh content created by FEI itself. Visit their website, or sign up here.

SmartBrief for CFOs – The SmartBrief series of updates targets different readers daily, and their SmartBrief for CFOs is popular. SmartBrief is not a mainstream old school media property, but links through to articles of relevance to the Chief Financial Officer and other senior finance executives. I personally like their polls on hot topics. You can sample their report for today here, or sign up here.

CFO Daily Alert – Published by CFO Magazine, the grey lady of CFO journalism, this daily alert points to their relevant topics covered in their magazine and website. As one of the key content creators for the Chief Financial Officer, knowing what is important to CFO Magazine can allow you to further your own point of view on important CFO related topics. Join their mailing list here.

Being on top of what is happening in the world is important to the CFO and other senior finance executives.

What do you need to read every day?

TABLE 1.1 What Is and What Is Not a CFO?

1. The Strategist

2. The Business Leader

3. The Resident Advisor

A quick word on skills

Contact Information