The Traditional Role

The role of Chief Financial Officer has undergone a critical change during the last decade. CFOs were traditionally tasked with handling just finances, accounts and compliance. Most CFOs would only report performance numbers to the Board of Directors and were following predefined strategy / directions.

Macro Level Viewpoint and active participation in Strategy Formulation

Today its a completely different story. Apart from the usual role, CFOs are focusing more on the macro level goals of the organisation, Value creation, Sustainability, Consistent Growth, Building Brands, Talent Management, etc. While planning the future of the organisation the CFOs now engineer all the above factors and formulate strategies with the CEOs and the Directors.

Cross Functional Skills

CFOs and their teams are actively involved in learning cross functional skills which helps them develop deep understanding of the business and devise various strategies that can be implemented to scale up the business and improve efficiencies.

Tech Driven Transformation

CFOs are now transforming the finance function and their teams into a tech based environment wherein data collection and analysis is quickest to respond to a situation quickly and appropriately. The damage can be contained if responded immediately. Companies whose CFOs who don’t embrace technology timely in their functioning will end up loosing to their competition who actively engage tech based advancements.

COVID Learnings

Many CFOs having a macro approach have helped their organisation sail through the Covid pandemic. It has taught them how to navigate a storm which has potential to completely uproot a business and how to be better prepared for future. CFOs are now performing mock scenarios wherein, various factors are varied in different time period, their impact is assessed and learnings from this exercise are used to be better prepared for any situations.