CFO Leadership

This is the second installment in a series of blog posts based on Vena’s ongoing “Women in Finance” video series. Each post corresponds with a different interview with a woman in finance leadership. Watch Episode 2 below.   Melissa Howatson didn’t always know she wanted to be a CFO. While today Melissa is Vena’s Chief Financial Officer, there was a time when she thought she might take a completely different path.  In recognition of Women’s History Month, Melissa spoke to Wendy Braithwaite, Chief Financial Planning & Orchestration Officer at Microsoft Canada, for Vena’s second Women in Finance video, “Harnessing Your Finance Leadership Potential.” There, she explained how she shifted into finance very early on. “I actually did a co-op in teaching when I was in high school,” she says. “And then I did one in accounting and I was really torn. I didn’t know which way to go. I’m very happy the journey’s taken me down this path.” After high school and university were over, Melissa’s path took her from senior accountant at KPMG on through increasingly bigger leadership roles. But her journey is just one journey. Every financial leader follows a different path to get them where they are. And if your dream is to be a CFO one day too, so will you—following the opportunities that come your way and chasing your own unique leadership goals.  Still, there are some key pieces of advice every young financial professional with leadership dreams can follow to keep on track for future CFO success. 💡Key Takeaways: The path to CFO starts with a relevant education and certifications that will assist you on your journey—which might simply mean a bachelor’s in finance, but could also include additional education such as a master’s degree and/or CPA credentials. To put yourself on the leadership track, you need to ask for opportunities that will get you noticed—whether that means asking for a chance to lead projects, for feedback along the way or for additional opportunities to set yourself apart. Don’t wait to develop the skills you need for a CFO position. Take a look at what your favorite finance leaders bring to the table and start developing those skills early on—including both technical and soft skills. And find mentors that will point you in the right direction. The Path to CFO and Five Tips To Get You There You have to start somewhere. And if becoming a CFO is your ultimate goal, that means putting together the right list of credentials to get you there. That starts with an appropriate education and any additional certifications you think will help. A bachelor’s degree related to finance or business might be enough, but you could also pursue a master’s degree and/or CPA qualifications as well. After that, it’s all about gaining the requisite experience you need and working your way up the leadership track. Ultimately, it’s a combination of education, experience and best practices that will set you apart. Along the way, there are a few tips you can follow to stay on track with your leadership goals. In her interview, Melissa offered these five: 1. Ask for Feedback Asking for feedback serves multiple purposes. Not only does it help you learn from your colleagues, mentors and leadership team—giving you a better frame of reference to fix any mistakes or to make improvements you might not have noticed yourself—but it shows you have a willingness to learn as well. And that’s an important trait to have if you’re hoping to tackle a CFO position one day.  But asking for feedback “can be scary sometimes,” Melissa says.  So how do you find the courage to ask for the feedback you know will make you better—while also staying open to possible criticism too? One way is to be specific. Asking specific questions in specific situations can help guide the feedback and keep any criticisms situational rather than soul-crushing. “It's lower stakes feedback,” Melissa says. “[Such as] ‘What could I have done better?’ or ‘Tell me where I went wrong?’”  By asking those types of questions regularly of the people you admire, you can start applying that feedback to your job and ongoing projects—and put yourself in a stronger position for promotions and future career growth. 2. Lead From the Side Even if you aren’t yet in a leadership position, you can still gain leadership experience. Just try “leading from the side,” Melissa says. “It can be ‘There's a project and can I be on this and take on a bit more of a leadership role?’” she explains. “It doesn't always have to be formal leadership.”  Those experiences can set you apart and show your managers that you have what it takes to expand your role and take on new responsibilities. They can also help you hone your leadership style and build soft skills such as communication, listening and empathy. Plus, you can start to figure out where you excel and what you still need to work on (in fact, it may be a good time to ask for feedback!).  That’s the kind of work that gets noticed—putting you on the leadership track. 3. Seek Out New Opportunities The common thread between the last two suggestions? They both started with asking. Because you can’t always wait for opportunities to come to you. Sometimes you have to ask for them. “If you asked me earlier [in my career] about things I would do differently, that's something that I would've done differently,” Melissa says. “I think I waited for leadership to happen to me. In hindsight, I would have been more proactive. So I think that if somebody aspires to be a leader or thinks maybe they will but doesn't know, ask for those opportunities to have those experiences.” Asking can come in different forms: applying for promotions and new jobs you think will help you get ahead, for example, or asking your leadership team for the chance to get involved in new projects that will expand your skill set. Whatever the case, the idea is to round out your abilities and make yourself a better leader overall. Which brings us to our next two suggestions. 4. Build the Skills That Matter The best leaders have a range of skills they can draw on—including both the technical skills required in their industry as well as non-technical, soft skills such as decision making, communication and collaboration.  While the skills that matter will vary depending on the path you choose to follow, identifying those skills early will help you develop and build on them throughout your career. To figure out what skills you need, look at the leaders around you and where they excel, and examine the skills that make your colleagues or managers stand out.  By adding more tools to your own toolbox, you’ll make yourself the obvious choice when the next leadership role opens up. 5. Get Help Along the Way We talked about the importance of mentors in our last Women in Finance blog post, and Melissa reiterates the need for them as you build a career that will take you into leadership circles.   “Mentorship has been so key to helping me get where I am and having those places where you can go and bounce ideas off or get feedback from others,” she says. “And so I'd encourage anybody who's looking to move into leadership to look for some strong mentors.” To find the right mentor, go in with a specific goal in mind. For example, are you looking for industry-related help, seeking out gender-based advice or trying to find assistance getting over specific obstacles in your way? Knowing what you want and where you need assistance will help you choose the best mentorship fit from your professional network.  And if you’re a woman, that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to find another woman to take on that role. “I've had some amazing male mentorship as well,” Melissa says. Conclusion If you're a finance professional with ambitions to make it to the highest ranks of financial leadership, it’s never too early to start your journey. By putting the right skills, learning and best practices into place—and working on your leadership abilities—you can get yourself onto the leadership track.  From there, it’s just about having the confidence to know you can make your goals come true. Want to learn more? Watch Vena’s newest Women in Finance video, "Harnessing Your Finance Leadership Potential" with Vena CFO Melissa Howatson. The next interview, with Vena’s Vice President of Finance, Muneerah Kanji, is scheduled to be released March 22, 2023.

This is the first installment in a series of blog posts based on Vena’s ongoing “Women in Finance” video series. Each post corresponds with a different interview with a woman in finance leadership. Watch Episode 1 below.   A young Christine Harms was working in a restaurant when she first decided to pursue a career in finance. Early on in her college experience, the current Controller for the Arizona Cardinals had rejected her initial studies in electrical engineering, deciding it wasn’t for her. But she didn’t have a back-up plan either. “I went home and ran a restaurant. Or helped to run a restaurant,” she remembers. “And the owners were like, ‘You know, you're really good with accounting. You're doing all the headcount, you're doing all the payroll, you're doing all the bills, you're doing all of this—you should be an accountant.’ And I took that to heart and I researched it and said, ‘Okay, I'm gonna be an accountant.’” That was just the start of the journey that brought her to her current role. But there was a jagged path in between—including a period spent working in nonprofits, time off to start a family and some decisions that felt risky at the time. But for Harms, it was her mother—a first-generation immigrant turned small business owner—who inspired her at every step along the way.  “She's now in her seventies and she's very successful,” Christine says. “She taught my brother and me, ‘Do what you're good at and enjoy what you're good at. And you can do everything you want to do, you just have to learn it.’” While that might have been the case for Christine, though, is it still true for women today making their way up in finance? And how does the newest generation of female finance professionals navigate their own path to the top echelons of finance success? Christine spoke to Wendy Braithwaite, Chief Financial Planning & Orchestration Officer for Microsoft Canada, for “Building a Successful Career in Corporate Finance,” the first of Vena’s Women in Finance video series. There, she offered some words of advice for young women starting their own careers in finance today. 💡Key Takeaways: While women are gradually taking on more financial leadership positions, the balance of top-level finance jobs are still held by men—and there are still challenges in the way for women looking to make it to the top. The reason women aren’t making it to the top in greater numbers is multifold. Not only are they missing out on promotions early on in their career, but inadequate work-life balance is burning them out and a fear of failure and a seeming lack of mentorship opportunities are holding them back. To help build a clearer path to leadership roles, women need to get over their fear of failure, while finding a company that supports them, asking for the mentorship opportunities they need and pursuing a path they love—taking informed risks along the way. Why Aren’t Enough Women Making It to the Top? Before we look at Christine’s advice, let’s examine the state of women in finance today. Are they making it to leadership positions—and if not, why not? The truth is, while a similar percentage of women and men enter finance, women still aren’t making it to the top in the same numbers as their male counterparts. In financial services as a whole, women make up just 19% of C-suite positions throughout the United States. That’s even lower than the 22% average across industries. While the good news is that there are more female CFOs than ever before, the ratios are still widely uneven. And even today there are still a range of challenges getting in the way. These are just a few: 1. The “Broken Rung” If women and men are entering the financial services workforce in near equal numbers, but very few are making it to those top-tier positions, something must be happening along the way. And part of that is just a numbers game. Because the truth is, women are less likely to get promoted early on in their career—from entry positions into managerial roles. And that means they’re less likely to find themselves in a position later on to reach senior leadership too. “Within financial services, only 86 women are promoted to manager for every 100 men,” McKinsey and LeanIn.Org revealed in their 2021 Women in the Workplace report. In fact, they found that that’s pretty much the standard across industries. That “broken rung” early on in the career ladder presents systemic challenges that make it harder for women to make it to the top. 2. A Lack of Mentors The right mentors can help guide you—pointing you toward career-enhancing opportunities and becoming a sounding board for decisions along the way. In that role, they can be key to your professional growth and embolden you with the confidence you need to excel. Yet research shows that 63% of women haven’t had a formal mentor—even though 67% rate it as highly important for the advancement of their career. Of course, many women seek out other women when they look for mentors so the fact that there are fewer women in leadership roles can make it seem like there are fewer mentors to choose from. Yet, it’s also the case that female leaders simply aren’t being asked. In fact, 54% of women in leadership positions have only been asked a few times or less to be a work mentor, while 20% have never been asked at all. This despite the fact that 71% of those leaders say they always accept mentorship requests. 3. Inadequate Work-Life Balance Even today, women still spend more time on household responsibilities than men. This is true in every country around the world and is the case whether a woman works full time or not. In fact, research has shown that while women spend more time on “family activities” compared to men, they spend the same amount of time on “work activities.” Not surprisingly, then, work-life balance can be a struggle. That struggle to find a balance can lead to a higher risk of burnout and lower productivity overall. Both of which can affect a woman’s performance, damage her review scores and negatively impact her overall career trajectory—making top-level success harder to achieve. 4. Fear of Failure “Failure isn’t the opposite of success, it’s part of success,” Arianna Huffington once said. But fear of failure can often get in the way of actually achieving that success. This is true for anyone, but can especially be the case for women, who often feel a pressure to be perfect, something they’re taught from a young age. A global study of female students, published in 2021, found that this fear was particularly prevalent among high achievers. The study pointed to that fear-of-failure gender gap as one of the reasons women are underrepresented in certain occupations. Fear of failure—and an overall lack of confidence—can be a real obstacle, then, for women trying to get to the top. Not only because failure can be a learning experience that can make us better leaders, but because that fear can make us give up on those bigger dreams before we even have a chance to realize them. Advice for Future Female Finance Leaders Of course, those aren’t the only challenges women face in the workplace today. There are still biases that pervade many workplaces that can also get in the way when it comes to getting ahead. Despite those challenges, though, women entering the finance field today also have a wealth of opportunities available to build the type of career that will make those leadership roles possible. And with more female CFOs than ever before, the trajectory is clearer than it once was. So what can the next generation of female finance professionals do to put themselves on the fast track towards top-level success? Here are a few pieces of advice: 1. Find a Path You Love “I love numbers,” Christine Harms says. But when she first started her education in accounting, it still took her some time to find the best place to apply that love of numbers to her future career.  “I had never in my life received a C in any class and my very first accounting class was a C and I thought, what have I done?” she remembers. “But it got a little easier and I got a B. Then I went into managerial accounting. And I think that the different approach of financial accounting and managerial accounting is what tipped the scale for me.”   Of course, university isn’t the only opportunity to switch gears and find a new path that works for you. You’ll have those opportunities throughout your career, as you follow different career trajectories and explore different positions. And when you do, it’ll be easier to find the path you love and excel in.  “There are so many different areas of finance, honestly, that you can find your niche in what you find intriguing, interesting, fun. And it's not really a career once you find that point,” Christine says. “It's like doing what you love to do every day.” 2. Find a Company That Supports You Positive work-life balance is possible. And it’s even more possible at a company that does what it can to support it. You just need to find the right workplace. That might mean seeking out a company that offers flexible working hours that let you easily juggle things like childcare and family appointments as well as work. It may mean choosing to work with companies that provide mental health benefits or have a culture that recognizes your overall accomplishments, not just the hours you spend behind a desk. But most of all, it means finding a company that actually cares about your overall well-being and career progression—and will support you in your journey. Because when you find those companies, charting out a path to a successful career can be as easy as asking for it. “Your job and the people you work with, you have to let them in—to tell them ‘This is what I want and this is what I'm going to work for,’” Christine says. “‘And I'm going to do the best job I can for you, but these are also the things that I desire.’” 3. Ask for Mentorship Opportunities Research shows that men are more likely than women to seek out mentorship opportunities—as well as to offer them. But there’s an easy solution.  By seeking out and asking for the mentorship opportunities you want, you can start to reap the benefits the right mentor can offer. As we saw earlier, 71% of female leaders say they always accept work mentorship requests. And if you approach someone who, for whatever reason, doesn’t accept your request? Well, that doesn’t mean you need to stop looking for someone who will. Someone like Christine, for instance, who loves being a mentor. “Being an advocate and mentoring career growth not only makes me feel good, but it makes my team members feel good and it teaches them more,” she says. “I think the biggest motivator for me is being able to share my knowledge, to share my understanding of what I can help someone else with in their career.” 4. Take Informed Risks “Don't be afraid of change,” Christine says. In fact, taking calculated risks is often what it takes to get ahead.  Yet women have long been seen as more risk avoidant than men in the workplace—probably at least in part because of that aforementioned fear of failure. But 2022 research in the Psychology of Women Quarterly also shows that their risk taking isn’t always met with the same positive response as that of their male counterparts.  Does that mean women should avoid risks altogether? No. But you should embrace workplaces that will reward those risks—whether they’re made by a man or a woman. And while you can learn which risks will get the best response, you shouldn’t let roadblocks along the way stop you from taking more. Take applying for a job, for example. Women apply to 20% fewer jobs than men—in part because they feel like they need to meet 100% of a job’s criteria to be considered. Men, on the other hand, will apply after meeting only 60% of the requirements. Taking a risk, and applying for that job anyway, could go a long way to helping you realize your goals. 5. Face Your Fears “There’s nothing in the world that anyone can’t do if they would just put their mind to it,” Christine says.  But that doesn’t mean your goals are going to come easy—and that there won’t be failures along the way. And being afraid of that failure before it happens isn’t going to help you achieve your goals. In fact, by accepting the fact that you will fail at some point, and understanding exactly what it is that has you so scared, you can start to face your fears and get past them—so that they don’t get in the way of your success. "Fearlessness is a muscle,” Arianna Huffington said. And like all muscles, it takes some exercise to develop. The Next Generation of Finance Somewhere out there, the next generation of female finance leaders is already forging their way to top-level success. While you may not know yet what the future has in store, you have the goals to get you there. And that’s where it starts. Finding the path that will make those goals a reality is the next part. Thankfully there are female finance leaders—Christine Harms, for example—to provide inspiration along the way. Watch the entire Building a Successful Career in Corporate Finance video, featuring an interview with Christine Harms. And stay tuned for the next interview, with Vena CFO Melissa Howatson, scheduled for release March 15, 2023.

This blog was originally published on March 5, 2021 and revised on February 14, 2023. FP&A&U You’re SUM stuff! It’s accrual world without you!  Can’t stop, won’t stop. 😆 But puns aside, Valentine’s Day is a great reminder to show your finance team some love. A little heartful appreciation for all their hard work, dedication, teamwork and support adds up when it comes to building positive and supportive relationships in the workplace.  So how can you recognize and celebrate your team, help them feel valued and appreciated and brighten up their day not only on Valentine’s Day, but every day? Read on to discover five ways to show your finance team you love them.      1. Know and Understand Them as People Learn to understand that the same people you count on every day to bring their “A” game are also the same people who live their own unique lives. This InHerSight article on the signs of a positive workplace culture says that one of the signs is that “people feel safe talking about their lives outside of work.” Make it a point to get to know the individual players on your team, whether they have kids, spouses or pets. Try to remember important details about their lives and ask them about them sometimes.  As the article says, “If a company prioritizes a sense of belonging and acceptance—and a work-life balance—employees are likely going to feel more comfortable bringing up the jaw-dropping final score of their kid’s soccer game or what their weekend plans are with their partner.” As a finance leader, it’s important to build a relationship with your team. It shows that you don’t just care about their productivity, but that you genuinely care about them as people. Not only will you understand what motivates them, but you’ll also get to know what they need to succeed in their role. “If a company prioritizes a sense of belonging and acceptance—and a work-life balance—employees are likely going to feel more comfortable bringing up the jaw-dropping final score of their kid’s soccer game or what their weekend plans are with their partner.” 2. Try the Little Things  Sometimes it’s not always about the grand gestures because little things can go a long way too.  According to this Quantum Workplace article on the importance of employee recognition, it says, “When employees feel valued, they’re more engaged, motivated, and likely to go the extra mile for their company.” Their research found that when employees believe they will be recognized, they are 2.7x more likely to be highly engaged. “When employees believe they will be recognized, they are 2.7x more likely to be highly engaged.” Measures such as an unexpected appreciation email to a team member, congratulating someone on a personal milestone, helping them enroll in a training course or having your team leverage tools to make their lives easier for budgeting and reporting are ways to keep your team motivated personally and professionally. Showing that you’re invested in your team’s personal growth is a great way to send the message that you care. Whatever it is you do, just make sure it’s genuine and from the heart. 3. Just Say “Thank You” According to this Workhuman survey highlighting the importance of humanity in the workplace, over 60% of respondents said a simple “thank you” would make their hard work feel more appreciated. Although your team is being compensated, money isn’t the same as a “thank you”. A human expression such as this can build a relationship of gratitude within your team so they know their long hours aren’t going unnoticed. Now, how you say it is completely up to you. You could send a handwritten note to your team or have lunch delivered to them to express how grateful you are for their dedication. However you get it done, this small expression of gratitude is a big way to show your team that they are valued. 4. Celebrate The Big Moments  Meeting goals at work is always worth celebrating, but you should always make a point to celebrate the moments in your team’s lives, such as birthdays, anniversaries and personal milestones. According to this article on Risepeople.com, they say, “When it comes to celebrating workplace milestones, there are no real ‘best practices.’ The way you reward and celebrate your team members should depend on the team members themselves and on your company. Not everyone likes rewards in the form of public accolades or gifts, and not everyone is motivated by the same things.”  With that in mind, creating a culture of appreciation means celebrating each of your team members in their own unique way. Making time to acknowledge the special moments in their personal and professional lives shows them that it matters to you too. “Not everyone likes rewards in the form of public accolades or gifts, and not everyone is motivated by the same things.”   5. Reward Them Accordingly Lastly, don’t forget to incentivize work that goes above and beyond. The ability to give your team bonuses or other monetary incentives is a monumental way to show appreciation. According to this Forbes article on monetary incentives in the workplace, “Extra money is always a valuable reward. For some people, money is the ultimate motivator, especially for employees who have financial goals to achieve. Employers can offer cash rewards to employees who strive for top performance, go above and beyond or meet set goals. This instills a sense of purpose and satisfaction from accomplishment and a job well done.” “For some people, money is the ultimate motivator, especially for employees who have financial goals to achieve.” Rewarding extra work with extra pay is the ultimate way to retain your team and keep morale high, especially during unpredictable times. But other monetary incentives, such as profit sharing, tuition reimbursement, referral programs and additional time off, are just as effective. Why You Should Appreciate Your Team  As a finance leader if you show your team that you support, love and appreciate them to the fullest extent, they’ll continue to stay dedicated to your mission. Labor Planning Made Easy Appreciation goes a long way. Use a smarter workforce planning solution and save your finance team all the hassle and headaches. They’ll love you for it.

Looking ahead is a natural part of finance. In fact, we spend a lot of time doing it. But we also look back, examining historical data to get insight into current trends—and use the past and present to try to predict what the future will bring.  The beginning of a new year, then, is a good time to consider the past, present and future. To look at the past year to see where it brought us—then examine what possibilities the year ahead might offer.  Unfortunately, for a lot of finance teams, 2022 was a bit of a roller coaster. It left us in a place of market uncertainty, with a need for agility and cautious optimism about the future. And in 2023, I expect the need for agility will continue to be a reality. But we’ll also be more ready for anything that may come. So let’s look back a bit. Then look forward to some of the ongoing trends finance professionals should keep top of mind to navigate the year ahead. 💡Key Takeaways: 2022 saw its fair share of uncertainties—starting with a war for talent and ending with an economic downturn. But those uncertainties have inspired finance teams to become more agile—making them more ready for anything ahead. There’s no reason to think there won’t be more uncertainty in 2023. But finance will continue to evolve to be an effective partner to the rest of the business. To do that, they’ll look for new skill sets and ways to work smarter, embracing new technologies that help. With the right people, processes and technology in place, finance teams can become more certain in the face of uncertainty, and can continue to help their companies stay on track. A Look Back at 2022 If you’re in finance, you’re probably reflecting on 2022 and what it means for your business going forward. After a couple of tumultuous years before it, caused mostly by the pandemic and its repercussions, the year brought a whole slew of new uncertainties we all had to find our way through. It started with a war for talent. Finance leaders began the year looking for the right skills to build out their teams, all in the wake of the Great Resignation, which saw some top talent walk away. But a shortage of talent—and the question of how to attract and retain the right employees—would only be the first challenge. Unstable supply chains, rising inflation, escalating interest rates and spiraling economic conditions became the new realities—putting us on track for a possible recession. So while the war over talent eased some, those new macroeconomic uncertainties put finance teams in a new line of fire.  Finance teams have had to pivot quickly, shifting priorities in the light of the new economic climate: optimizing costs as access to capital became more challenging and finding ways to balance the bottom line with the top line more rapidly. Growth goals are still top of mind, of course, but it’s become a balancing act. Today, most are focused on more measured, responsible growth.  And as we go into 2023, that’s what’s top of mind, with organizations looking for the technology, talent and processes that will help move them forward toward those goals. But none of us are forgetting the number of changes we’ve encountered over the last few years either. In these uncertain times, agility is still key—and it’s going to continue to be a priority for finance teams this year.  The good news is that agility is something we’re all getting used to at this point. 5 Predictions for 2023 So what can we expect for 2023? First of all, I don’t think we can expect the economy to suddenly bounce back. There’s probably more to come before we start to climb back from the current market shifts. And who knows what other surprises are in store for us along the way? But I do think finance teams are in a better place to handle those changes—and will continue to put the talent, tools and processes in place to excel in these uncertain times. With that in mind, here are my predictions for 2023: 1. Finance Will Focus on Evolving New Skill Sets The war on talent may have eased since the start of 2022—but that doesn’t mean it’s over. Finance today needs an evolving set of skills—and leaders will continue to look for and develop them in 2023.  After all, today’s finance teams need to be strategic partners to the rest of their business. They need to be leaders in their organizations. And they also need to be technology superusers, using tech to stay ready for anything. To be successful in those roles, they require skills that the finance function might not have sought out 10 years ago.  Those include technical skills to drive their technology investments, but also soft skills like communication, problem solving, influence, empathy and the ability to listen. These latter skills will help finance teams collaborate better with the rest of the organization, to understand the points of view of other departments and build a business that works together toward common goals. 2. Teams Will Look for Ways To Work Smarter As they continue to develop their role as strategic business partners and build the skill sets they need to excel in that role, finance teams this year will also look for new ways to work smarter and get the most out of the resources they have. With that in mind, they’ll search out places to add efficiencies to the processes that drive them and find ways to optimize their costs and the team members they have. Smart finance teams have already been doing exactly this, of course. But in times of uncertainty like those we’re seeing now, it’s more critical than ever. So don’t be surprised if you see more of this in 2023—with more scenario planning, for example, and more inputs to better determine the best course ahead.  But this is also where some soft skills—such as communication, empathy and listening—come in. Because only by collaborating and communicating with the entire organization can finance understand where those efficiencies and cost savings can be successfully added without affecting your organizational goals. Working closely with HR, for example, will be more critical than ever, in order to identify the best opportunities to improve productivity—whether that be through automation or process improvement, or by improving clarity on priorities, decision making or span of control. 3. They’ll Embrace New Technologies To Help Them Whether you’re increasing your use of automation or finally embracing artificial intelligence (AI), the way to achieve many of those efficiencies and cost savings is through the use of technology. I don’t think that’s new, but in 2023, we expect to continue to see this grow, as finance teams build on their technology stacks to get more out of less.  AI, for example, has long been seen as “the next big thing,” but I think acceptance has been gradual—and that gradual acceptance will continue to build this year. All while more and more finance teams see the need to further automate manual, repetitive tasks. But point solutions aren’t enough. Teams need integrated end-to-end solutions to build those efficiencies into your business. These end-to-end solutions can help you leverage an entire ecosystem of technology that works together seamlessly.  4. They’ll Become More Certain in the Face of Uncertainty At this point, uncertainty has basically become the status quo. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve experienced one market challenge after another, forcing finance teams to pivot again and again. And 2022 has shown us that isn’t likely to change. This year, though, I think organizations should be more ready for whatever comes next, just by virtue of what they’ve already gone through. With workforces more firmly enmeshed in remote and hybrid work, many finance teams already have the tools in place to facilitate collaboration across distributed teams and build connections across their organization. Many have identified the technology that will help them stay agile and have put in place the processes and people they need to respond to change. Those that haven’t yet recognize the need. In 2023, then, I believe teams will be well-positioned to meet challenges head-on. With so much change behind them, they’ll reach a point where they have much of what they will need to help them navigate through it—including tools such as scenario planning and rolling forecasts that boost their agility and keep them looking forward. 5. They Won’t Lose Focus of Their Long-Term Goals Uncertainty—and the need to be agile in the face of it—doesn’t mean letting go of long-term goals. Having more of a handle on those market changes now means that finance leaders can continue to focus on long-term planning in 2023. They can continue to lean into their business strategy and be an important voice in helping to shape that strategy and how it ties into long- and short-term plans. That means connecting the dots from where you are now to where you hope to be in five or 10 years. Because while those dots might change formation as you pivot in the face of change, your long-term goals don’t need to change. It might just mean rethinking your plans and restructuring the steps to get you there. But I think finance leaders have realized that they can’t lose sight of their overall objectives in the meantime, or let that uncertainty pull them too far off track. With this realization, they’ve opened up all sorts of opportunities for 2023. Conclusion A new year isn’t a completely fresh start. We’ll continue to see many of the same trends play out in 2023 that we’ve seen over the last couple of years. But that’s a good thing too—we’ve learned from everything the market has thrown at us so far. Hopefully, that means we’ll be ready to take on whatever it is that comes next too.  Here’s to all the possibilities that 2023 will bring. Plan for Anything With Vena Vena Complete Planning combines what you love about Excel with the power of the Vena Growth Engine to drive agile, business-wide planning, resilience and growth.

CFOs are constantly weighing the company's resources, return on time and human capital against company health and shareholder value. So why should CFOs pay attention to capital allocation now? One reason is that recent global crises have forced companies to change their capital plans on the fly. Some companies were able to change, but many were unable to because they didn't have a working plan.  In addition, environmental, social and governance risks and activist shareholders force many executives to anticipate long-term strategic implications. For example, finance leaders should consider the impact of these challenges on critical investments, such as how climate change will affect new manufacturing facilities in vulnerable regions of the world. Additionally, government tracking and implementation of new tax regimes will have a significant impact on how much and how quickly businesses can leverage tax equity for their capital investments. Yet capital allocation is not just about achieving higher returns with less spending. It's about measuring the return on internal investments and maintaining the cash flow that enables those investments.  Proper capital allocation gives companies a real edge over their competitors. In this post on CFO insights, we explore how better capital allocation decisions and an appropriate strategy can help bridge the gap between profitability and growth.    💡Key Takeaways: With so many allocation options to consider, better-than-expected earnings and positive cash flow often present a dilemma for CFOs. Three key elements of smart capital allocation include diversification, insight-based technology and growth, including a balance of investments and paying operating costs.  In capital allocation, remember to review trends and begin small, building upon each decision.  Don’t use buzzwords and fancy lingo in communicating with shareholders regarding critical capital allocation decisions. Use simple terms and be precise and concise. What Smart CFOs Know About Capital Allocation Better-than-expected earnings and positive cash flow are desirable in and of themselves, but with so many allocation options to consider, they often present a dilemma for CFOs.  Some capital allocation options may include returning cash to shareholders through dividends, repurchasing shares, issuing special dividends or increasing research and development (R&D) budgets.  Source: YouTube  Alternatively, companies may choose to invest in growth initiatives. This may include spending on acquisitions and organic growth or finding ways to expand operations. Regardless of how you allocate capital, maximizing shareholders’ equity (SE) is often your top priority and determining which allocation provides the greatest return always presents a challenge.  The question to ask yourself would be, is there a better strategy?  3 Key Elements of Smart Capital Allocation Before we discuss the three elements of smart capital allocations, keep in mind that you cannot set anything in stone.  The market changes rapidly and a well-thought-out strategy for today may prove catastrophic in the future.  That’s why we recommend reviewing and revising your capital allocation strategy regularly. Companies that continually evaluate their allocation strategies and adjust them accordingly are worth more and assume fewer risks than companies that do not.  Along with reevaluating your allocation strategy regularly, focus on these three elements of capital distributions: 1. Diversification Liquidity is a nearly guaranteed aspect of any market, and ultimately the uncertainty that this fluidity supply makes investment diversification so critical.  Unfortunately, current trends for many organizations are to simply pile large amounts of capital in the same place instead of diversifying to reduce risk and boost returns.                                                                   Source: The Financial Wellness Blog 2. Insights Smart capital allocation requires data-driven insights. The right FP&A software solution offers a strategic perspective of long- and short-term financial goals, economic growth trends, stock market data and more.  All organizations—especially those that haven’t been operating for long—can improve their financial futures with insights from FP&A software that helps their business manage capital allocation.  3. Growth Capital allocation inevitably involves decisions regarding trade-offs. Organizations must find the right balance between investments that serve the long-time needs of the business, those that drive growth and those that carry a higher risk but have the potential for high returns. Capital Allocation Do’s and Don’ts  Capital allocation can be tricky to navigate if you haven’t been doing it for long. As the CFO, knowing what to do (or not to do) when it comes to allocations requires prudence. First, review trends that similar organizations follow regarding capital allocation.  The CFO in the scenario depicted by the chart below determined that 50% of capital allocation should go towards breakout systems. They have allocated only 5% of the company’s cash and the remaining 45% for options trend following capital allocation.  Notice the CFO here focused their strategy on growth and maintaining profitability, not paying returns to stakeholders. Invest back into the business or plan for future instability.                                                                                Source: Theta Trend Notice the CFO here focused their strategy on growth and maintaining profitability, not paying returns to stakeholders. Invest back into the business or plan for future instability. While the above example does seem a bit simplistic, keep in mind that when you begin developing a capital allocation strategy, the best practice will be to keep money in the company, spending it in ways that foster long-term stability and profitability. Now that we have covered the do’s, let’s review some of the things you want to avoid with these capital allocation don’ts:  Don’t Confuse Conventional With Conservative: Just because something’s common doesn’t make it the best or safe decision.   Don’t Ignore Base-Rate Probabilities: Don’t torture a spreadsheet to rationalize your decisions.  Don’t Assume You’re Right Because Others Agree:  Capital allocation requires critical thinking, so be skeptical when making decisions, even when people agree with you. Don’t Use Buzzwords and Fancy Lingo: In communicating with shareholders regarding critical capital allocation decisions, use simple terms and be precise and concise. Don’t Do Things That Don’t Make Sense to You:  Regardless of who is doing them.  Make Better Capital Allocation Decisions With Vena Build better budgets with smarter capital allocation. Simplify the process and plan for your company's financial future with confidence,  knowing you're working with a leader in FP&A insights.   With Vena, track variances between allocation periods and use this data to make informed allocation strategies. A detailed audit trail ensures transparency and accountability, giving you 100% control over your number.    Excel at Real-Time Allocations Tedious processes are a thing of the past with Vena. Our allocation software integrates directly with your general ledger, eliminating the need to manually enter journal entries. Vena's plan templates have allocation rules that suit your organization, making it easy to allocate funds to different departments with a single click.

Cultivating a customer-centric mindset will put your organization in a position to stand out over your competition. Organizations that fail to prioritize the customer experience risk, well, everything. Customers and their needs should be at the center of every decision an organization makes, and the first and last question in every business decision should be, "Will this work for our customers?" Your responsibility as the financial expert is to ensure this question is part of the discussion. 💡Key Takeaways:  While we have always heard "the customer is always right," it's the CFOs responsibility to ensure that processes benefit all customers.  CFOs help cultivate a customer-centric mindset by implementing and practicing operational-wide customer empathy. What are their emotional needs?    Improve relationships and deliver timely services to customers. It will ensure that they feel like a priority, enriching their customer experience. The CFO role entails ensuring company-wide information sharing so everyone is on the same page. If a system gets updated, they make sure every team is ready. Training with customer-centric scenarios will help them better understand where the customer is coming from and how to meet their needs.  Source: YouTube 5 Ways CFOs Are Helping To Cultivate a Customer-Centric Mindset  We all know the saying, "the customer is always right." You've likely used it at least once to describe a situation or to stop an argument. In today's customer-centric world, personal expectations are rapidly spilling over into the business world.  Taking a customer-centric approach is more critical than ever. Here are five ways  CFOs can play a role in cultivating a customer-centric mindset. 1. Operationalize Customer Empathy   Empathy is a buzzword we often hear, but few organizations recognize what it means, and much fewer practice it.  Customer empathy is recognizing a customer's emotional needs, understanding their reasons and responding to them appropriately and effectively. It's surprisingly pretty rare. Instilling empathy as a universal value that informs everything an organization does means leaders must do more than pay lip service. Slack, an enterprise communications software company, operates with a pillar of empathy.  Employees spend significant amounts of time reading customer messages and observing their behavior. They attempt to intuitively understand what customers want and need. Slack cultivates a customer-centric mindset throughout its entire enterprise.  2. Improving Relationships  Understanding your customers better helps build better relationships. As all CFOs know, that is the key to success in any business. When you know your customer's pain points, you can help them solve those problems and become successful.  3. Delivering Timely Services to Customers  Once you understand who your customers are and what they want, the next step is to ensure that your organization's resources get appropriately deployed to deliver service on time. It could be as simple as ensuring that your organization continually shares that information with customers. Alternatively, it could be something more crucial to your organization.  Perhaps you are evolving and adapting your product line to meet changing customer needs or looking to track growth based on customer behaviors. Maybe you can better understand what customers can and cannot afford and restructure their pricing model accordingly. 4. Sharing Information Across the Company  To better understand your customers, the CFO can take the lead to ensure the business shares information and enables a 360-degree view of each customer. You can ask the following  questions: What patterns emerge when you combine sales data with customer service data and even spend data?  What can you learn as a business about better serving your customers?  How do we find our fastest-growing customers?  How are their needs changing over time?   This type of analysis is not possible without an organizational perspective. Who could be better suited than a CFO to lead this customer-centric effort? An automated solution providing the company with a central database of information also allows anyone with permission to pull a report.  5. Train With Customer-Centric Scenarios  Equally important, this customer focus extends to the culture throughout the entire company. Employees must be people centric, considering every customer. It may mean training or retraining employees to think that way.   A strong voice from the leadership team can interject on behalf of the customers and offer training with customer-centric scenarios. For instance, the finance manager can train the sales team on the significance of each product price point. They can discuss why it is better for every customer when salespeople do not discount services for some or offer products at reduced pricing.  In this case, as the CFO, you would bring the customers' needs into the discussion. How a Lack of Customer Focus Can Hurt Your Business Before we dive into why your organization must cultivate a customer-centric mindset, let's review how this strategy will benefit your organization. As you can see from the image below, all strategies lead back to what is best for the customer.  Image Source: Oktopost Of course, not understanding customer needs as they change over time can lead to poor customer retention.  Lack of understanding hinders efforts to acquire new customers. Your organization becomes obsolete and receives bad word of mouth from disappointed current customers. Establishing a Customer-Centric Culture With Vena Solutions    The CFOs role is ever evolving as the needs of the company change. Automation makes it easier for finance professionals to complete accounting tasks so they can lend their insights to other business decisions.  With Vena, you get a strategic data hub that brings all your business-wide data and source systems together into a central database to ensure data accuracy. When you trust your data, you can make better customer-centric business decisions.     Your Customers, Vena's Solution With more accurate reporting and streamlined business information, you can spend less time on tedious accounting tasks and more time establishing a customer-centric mindset at your company. .

By 2025, experts predict the total amount of data will reach an estimated 180 zettabytes. Your business, like many others, will be eager to invest in resources to understand that data for greater operational performance. At the heart of those future discussions are talks of how AI in finance will be an important part of your toolkit for gaining a competitive advantage within your market.  As a CFO, this guide will provide key context on the “why” behind AI in finance and some of its use cases for you and your FP&A team.   💡Key Takeaways: Businesses have access to great amounts of financial and non-financial (operational) data that you must access to stay competitive in today’s commercial environment. CFOs and their FP&A teams are often the natural hub for this work because their pre-existing infrastructure traditionally emphasizes financial reporting.  AI is a field of computer science dedicated to replicating human intelligence in programming and encompasses different subfields such as machine learning and natural language queries.  The use case of AI in finance is endless, but we already see its value in supporting detailed forecasting, sifting through data sets, identifying usage trends and many other functions.   Why Will AI Be Essential for Optimizing the FP&A Functions of Your Business? Two key issues are driving the need for AI in finance and the need for CFOs to become familiar with the abundance of AI tools at their disposal.    1. Modern Businesses Must Work With Large Amounts of Financial and Non-Financial Datasets  As our systems transition from analog resources to digital and electronic formats (cloud computing), an increasingly infinite pool of data can inform and guide your business. The historic limits of our traditional data systems prevented companies from obtaining certain details useful for financial and operational planning.  You likely relied on manual data entry into Excel or other systems, which forced companies to prioritize certain data that you would consider essential for future planning (i.e., mostly financial data necessary for reporting on things such as cash flow and profit/loss statements).  Thanks to so much of our business happening online and via electronic systems, we can capture endless amounts of metadata and other non-financial metrics that provide essential context to your financial reports.  The problem for companies now, however, is again being able to use this data volume and diversity (this time due to the human limits of reviewing and making sense of it.) The widely accepted solution for this constraint on human capital is using AI to provide the necessary support.  AI can already do incredible things for reading, processing and sharing your data in helpful ways, but as this technology matures, the use cases will only continue to grow.                                                                                                 Source: Gartner 2. Finance Groups Are Increasingly Responsible for Leading Strategic Functions For CFOs, the bulk of this data analysis is falling upon the shoulders of your FP&A team or finance department, creating a further need for AI tools to reduce the burden of manual tasks. It makes sense that finance groups are the natural hubs for general company performance data because their core function already focuses on reporting and analysis, just with an emphasis on finance.  Regardless of your business size or the size of your finance team, AI will likely provide some utility that makes the most of your available resources.   What Do We Mean When We Talk About AI in Finance? Generally, AI refers to the modeling of computer programming and machine systems to replicate the capabilities of natural human intelligence, such as problem solving, decision making and the ability to perceive (visual or audio comprehension). Particularly, you may think of two important subsets of AI that already have applications in finance: machine learning and natural language querying.  Machine Learning (ML) Machine learning (ML) refers to statistical methods and algorithms that allow computers to classify data, discover trends and insights, and make other uses of data mining. In other words, machine learning relies on the vast amounts of data accessible to the program and uses that experience to achieve a designed outcome.   Natural Language Querying (NLQ) Natural language querying (NLQ), sometimes called natural language processing (NLP), is a type of AI that allows computers to comprehend human speech and provide a natural response. You can think of NLQ capabilities as the bridge  that allows us to quickly access the information your system has because of the work from its ML and other AI tools.                                                                                         Source: Gartner (2020) Some Use Cases and Examples of AI in Finance Below are some of the many ways AI is already paying dividends for those CFOs and business data leaders who integrate it within their FP&A process: Translation of PDF files that hold data from tables, financial statements and other items into user-friendly Excel spreadsheets for further analysis The ability to tackle tough questions during an earnings call or other executive meeting through NLQ tools that provide almost immediate charts, graphs and other visual representations of queries (e.g., what territory had the best sales for X product?) Stronger forecasting abilities thanks to ML tools such as Power BI and Excel Ideas that can discover new insights from data sets that your data scientists or FP&A team may struggle to find The ability to link your financial and operational datasets to identify granular trends, data anomalies, patterns and distinguish correlation from causation. An easy example is data analysis on purchases of different products that AI can use to provide more beneficial customer recommendations on selling platforms The Future of AI in Finance It’s only the beginning for AI in finance, but now is the time to learn and adopt. Integrating AI tools and our FP&A software solutions is at the heart of our company’s mission to help your company Plan To Grow™.   Excel at More With Vena Today Request a preview to see firsthand how our FP&A solutions will complement your use of AI in finance.

CFOs and their teams are facing a dilemma today. The dilemma is how to embrace the traditional strengths while, at the same time, adopting disruptive leadership strategies and techniques. Can CFOs balance tradition and disruption?  Some believe these concepts are contradictory and that an organization can choose traditional methods or adopt disruptive leadership. Yet, you shouldn't think of it in terms of traditional vs. disruptive leadership.  Instead, consider it a balance of current and former processes while innovation drives procedures forward.  What does that look like? Let's break down what disruptive leadership is and what it means to consider traditional over disruptive strategies and vice versa.     💡 Key Takeaways: Disruptive leadership is a progressive approach that refers to executives who recognize that traditional methods are less effective in an ever-advancing digital world. Traditional leadership makes decisions without considering insights from others, while disruptive leadership listens to and empowers teams during decision-making processes. There are five primary characteristics disruptive leadership experts see in great smart CFOs, including intelligence and a willingness to push boundaries. Smart CFOs are disruptive leaders who know how to look beyond traditional data, ask the right questions and listen to the answers to glean useful insights. What Is Disruptive Leadership?   Disruptive leadership is a progressive approach to leadership. It refers to executives who find that traditional management methods don’t work in an ever-advancing digital world. It requires a mindset focused on the positives of business disruptions as companies integrate new technologies into existing systems.  The functions of finance are gaining further importance while advances in fintech impact how companies manage revenue and cash flow.  Finance disruption leaders must instill a disciplined approach regarding innovation efforts. They hold on to conservative approaches while taking risks and challenging the status quo.   Historical reporting activities will continue to be vital, but require less time due to improved efficiencies from automation, consistent data and end-to-end reporting systems. It will require finance teams to shake up processes and leverage increasingly advanced technologies.   Traditional vs. Disruptive Leadership  Traditional leadership bases its style on the belief that those in power keep up with past procedures and policies, even if they are ineffective. It also rewards seniority over skills, meaning people earn promotions not on merit, but based on office politics and favoritism.  This style does nothing to cultivate a work culture focused on development or expansion, rather it maintains toxic work environments that do not foster growth.  To foster growth, you must facilitate change.  This requires a disruptive leader to step up and be the driving force to initiate this change. Someone with the wherewithal to take what works with traditional methods, to eliminate what doesn't and to accelerate strategies that balance tradition with disruption.   Traditional leadership makes decisions without utilizing or considering insights from the people reporting to them.  Disruptive leadership uses emotional intelligence (EQ) to develop new business strategies and to mobilize and empower top team members while creating even more space for disruptive leadership.   Source: People Puzzles 5 Characteristics of a Disruptive Leader Thought leader and disruptive leadership expert John Furth works with CEOs, CFOs and other C-suite executives to develop disruptive strategies that result in growth.  Over the last 25, Furth has worked with large corporations to develop disruptive and innovative leadership teams. Furth states, "Disruptive leaders like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have transformed companies… while generating incredible wealth for themselves [and] their investors."  His time with these disruptive leaders has taught him that they carry many of the same common traits: 1. Intelligence Their friends often refer to them as "brainiacs." While not all have advanced degrees (some business disruptors have never finished or even been to college), many have a Ph.D. from highly ranked universities. Whether educated or not, they all have a commitment to a lifetime of learning.  2. Pushes Boundaries Disruptive leaders are not afraid to push accepted boundaries. However, discretion is necessary to keep from destroying everything they and their teams are working hard to build.  A smart CFO will not only push boundaries within the company, but also disrupt their own mindsets to focus on agility and innovation over static processes.  3. Looks Beyond "Traditional" Data Disruptive leaders in finance are smart CFOs who recognize that data does not always come from traditional sources. They seek insights, information and inspiration in unexpected places.  If you are a smart CFO, you recognize that traditional data sources are, by nature, backward looking, providing a limited view of overall value.  Great disruptors will always ask exceptional questions and listen carefully to every answer. They never know when useful insight could come from an unexpected source.  4. They Ask "Why" Not only are disruptive leaders not afraid to ask why, but they stick around for the answer. Smart CFOs are solutions driven and constantly questioning current processes, business decisions and how to approach new opportunities.  Curiosity leads to exploration and growth. You can remove roadblocks by asking why, provide potential inputs on what to improve in the future and gain clarity when making new decisions.  5. Ready for the Disruption A smart CFO will understand that disrupting an existing ecosystem will cause significant short-term, adverse effects. Companies that cannot remain agile go out of business. Preparing for these temporary disruptions is part of the core competencies seen in disruptive leadership.  CFOs: The Chief Future Officers The responsibilities of the CFO are changing. There is pressure to be more than a leader reporting on the company's historical financial performance.  As the adoption of new technologies and better practices prevail, the CFO leads business strategies and guides future integrations, taking on the role of Chief Future Officer.  “Excelerate” Disruptive Leaders Give your organization's financial professionals the tools they need to balance traditional and disruptive leadership methods as we move into the future. Request a Demo

Sustainability. Inclusivity. Social responsibility. These aren’t just buzzwords. Not anymore. In today’s business environment, they’re more and more of a priority. Customers, partners and employees are more likely than ever to seek out good corporate citizenship from their organizations. Organizations that don’t embrace it can often find themselves lagging behind. As strategic partners to the rest of the business, finance leaders are in a position to prioritize good corporate citizenship—pushing an agenda that supports it through the rest of their organization. But are they ready? In our 2022 benchmark report, Vena wanted to find out. Based on a survey of 132 business leaders and finance and operations professionals coming from organizations across a range of industries, our third annual benchmark report, The State of Strategic Finance: Vena Industry Benchmark Report 2022 is now available for download.  This blog post will explore what it reveals on how finance is standing up for the world at large. Do today’s finance leaders see the importance of good corporate citizenship? And if so, are they doing everything they can to ensure their business is an agent of good? 💡Key Takeaways: The finance leaders we surveyed clearly have the best of intentions, with a majority naming environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria as important in some way to their business strategy. They’re prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as well. Where they seem to be falling short, though, is in actually taking action. By reporting on ESG-related metrics, finance leaders can start making better data-driven decisions to fuel their ESG efforts. Sustainable investing is also a way finance teams can make an impact and show what matters to them. To make DEI more of a priority, finance leaders should make diversity, equity and inclusion a part of all of their hiring decisions—with a clear set of guidelines in place. But they shouldn’t stop there. By prioritizing DEI through the top echelons of your organization, you start to make it part of the overall business culture. The Path of Good Intentions The good news? Our respondents clearly have the best of intentions. With 75% of respondents in our 2022 benchmark report calling environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria “somewhat important,” “important” or “very important” to their business strategy, it’s clear they see the need for good corporate citizenship. Only a scant, (5%) said they don’t consider ESG at all—a good sign that most leaders care. And the same is true for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). A large majority of the business professionals we surveyed saw diversity, equity and inclusion as “somewhat important” (17.5%), “important” (28%) or “very important” (45.5%) to their business strategy. That’s a full 91% that show support for DEI efforts—meaning diversity, equity and inclusion are on their minds. The problem is that good intentions only go so far. And where respondents fall short is in taking action: Only 35% said “yes” when asked if DEI informs their hiring strategy. Another 37% said DEI informs their hiring strategy “sometimes.”  Just 21% said their finance team was reporting on ESG-related metrics. Less than a third (28%) were applying an ESG lens to guide their investment decisions. So what can finance teams do to put their good intentions into action and lead their organizations to good corporate citizenship through company-wide ESG and DEI? Leading ESG: What Can Finance Do? Through sustainable finance efforts and a prioritization of environmental, social and governance criteria, finance teams can begin to lead the way on ESG. Here are two ways to get started: 1. Report on ESG-Related Metrics If only 21% of finance and operations teams are reporting on ESG-related metrics, that leaves almost 80% that aren’t. And as all finance professionals know, when you’re not measuring something, it’s harder to make informed decisions around it. If you want to put better ESG efforts into place, start by introducing metrics that will help you better understand where you’re falling short. Some areas to consider might include: Environmental Metrics Consumption of energy Supply chain miles Recycling and waste management Social Metrics Diversity and inclusion  Data protection and privacy Corporate social responsibility Governance Metrics Management diversity  Accounting transparency Executive and board compensation By understanding how you stand in areas like these, you can begin to get a full picture of your overall ESG competency—and use that data to encourage business-wide change. In fact, some businesses even include ESG disclosures in their annual report or have a separate sustainability report to show where their business stands—putting their efforts front and center. 2. Apply an ESG Lens to Your Investments Again, 28% of respondents applying an ESG lens to guide their investment decisions means more than 70% aren’t. And if you want finance to be a leader in ESG at your organization, that isn’t going to fly.  By applying ESG principles to your investment decisions, you put a strong signal out there that you’re ready to put your money where your mouth is. You’re not just telling everyone what they want to hear when it comes to environmental, social and governance issues—you’re putting the work in. And that can go a long way in letting potential employees, partners and customers know it matters to your business—helping to drive their decision to work alongside you.  But ESG investing isn’t just a positive move when it comes to good corporate citizenship. ESG funds are often associated with higher returns and other rewards—meaning they’re also good for your bottom line. Building DEI: Where To Start Of course, some of those same tips apply to your DEI efforts too. You can invest in businesses that prioritize DEI. And if some of those ESG metrics you start following are DEI-related, you’ll be able to apply the same data-driven decision making to your diversity programs as well. But why stop there? If you really want to put your words into action when it comes to DEI, here are two more ideas you can put into action: 1. Apply DEI to ALL of Your Hiring Decisions As our benchmark survey results show, most of the finance and operations professionals we surveyed tried to apply DEI to their hiring decisions. But it wasn’t necessarily codified into their hiring strategy. Almost three-quarters—72%—said they either “always” or “sometimes” apply DEI to those decisions. Not bad, right? Except, it’s the “sometimes” that worries us. That “sometimes” means that for 37% of respondents, DEI was optional—not formally integrated into their culture or hiring practices. But to truly be effective, DEI can’t be a “sometimes” kind of thing—it has to be coded into your culture as a whole. And like ESG investing, DEI-based hiring policies aren’t just “the right thing to do,” either. They also make good business sense. “For diverse companies, the likelihood of outperforming industry peers on profitability has increased over time, while the penalties are getting steeper for those lacking diversity,” McKinsey & Company reported in 2020. Diversity and inclusion introduces a wider spectrum of ideas and perspectives to your business environment—and that’s a win all round. If you’re a finance leader, you can start by introducing a stronger DEI hiring strategy to your own department first. But you can go even further and use your seat at the table to encourage the application of DEI to hiring strategies companywide. 2. Bring DEI Straight to the Top Our 2022 benchmark survey results show us that 40% of finance leaders have a seat at the table where key decisions are being made—and another 28% are sitting at the head of that table. As a strategic partner to the entire business, finance is in a unique position to offer guidance to top executives and board members on all issues—including DEI. By educating your executives and board members, you can begin to align them around key DEI criteria and start to build a company that supports those criteria from the top down. This can help drive everything from hiring choices to compensation decisions. A program that starts at the top will also be more likely to incorporate measurement and accountability measures that are applied throughout the entire business—building an overall culture around DEI. Also keep in mind that a serious DEI culture shouldn’t just permeate through the lower levels of the organization. To see true change, your board and executive team need to be diverse as well. And for that to happen, everybody needs to be on board.  So it’s time to put those business partnering skills to work. Putting Words Into Action “Obviously, more work needs to be done to put action to those beliefs—and finance is in the right position to guide those efforts,” we wrote in The State of Strategic Finance: Vena Industry Benchmark Report 2022. And those are words we’re firmly invested in. After all, finance leaders are business leaders. That means you have the power to “be the change you want to see in the world,” as Mahatma Gandhi is often credited as saying. So don’t just stop at good intentions. Start putting those intentions into action. The good news is that in today’s business environment, being a good corporate citizen is great for business too. 2022 Industry Benchmark Report The State of Strategic Finance What role have finance teams played amid the turbulence of 2022? How are they positioning themselves for the next uncertainty? Find out in Vena’s latest Industry Benchmark Report. Download the Insights