CFO Leadership

How CFOs Found the Ultimate Cure for Faulty ERP Systems

The story is all too familiar. After an expensive and arduous implementation your company’s ERP system is still not bringing in the promised benefits such a costly solution should provide. The issues can be many, but there are, of course, some usual suspec......

The story is all too familiar. After an expensive and arduous implementation your company’s ERP system is still not bringing in the promised benefits such a costly solution should provide. The issues can be many, but there are, of course, some usual suspects: continuously increasing costs to implement and maintain the system, and an inability to adopt minor changes. On top of that, many ERP projects reach a point of ‘no return’, where downsizing and going back to former systems can be even more costly and frustrating than pushing through the pain with your current ERP solution. That’s why Excel in the cloud and the value of a hybrid ERP approach can be a much needed prescription to the pain. In fact, Gartner estimates that over the next few years, at least a third of organizations will move most of their ERP applications to the cloud: “Early ERP adopters, particularly large enterprises in energy, manufacturing and distribution industries, are paying the penalty of a decade or more of excessive customization. Businesses looking to improve administration today can take advantage of lower costs, better functional fit and process flexibility offered by blending cloud applications with on-premises applications in what we now refer to as ‘postmodern ERP.” That’s not to say that legacy ERP systems are bound to die—instead they are undergoing an exciting evolution. The old-school concept of a solitary suite that meets all of the organization’s needs does no longer applies, and has been replaced by a hybrid ERP approach, combining niche cloud solutions with smaller on-premise ERP modules. “Longer term, over the next 10 years and more, we envision a scenario where more of the market ‘flips’ to the cloud. Instead of having on-premises core solutions that are complemented by innovation or differentiating processes being supported in the cloud, some organizations will move all their ERP functionality to the cloud,” said Nigel Rayner, research vice president at Gartner, in a press release. What makes this evolution all the more exciting is the newly found power that the CFO has found in the cloud, giving business leaders the greater influence, technology ownership and flexibility they’ve long demanded. Applications in the cloud, as PWC reports, “offer significantly lower barriers to entry in terms of time and cost, allowing functional teams to pilot and implement function-specific applications — in some cases, without any help from the IT department at all.” Linking cloud-based applications to legacy ERP systems is truly the best of both worlds, giving the CFO and his team much needed and long awaited ability to generate business value from their ERP systems. The post How CFOs Found the Ultimate Cure for Faulty ERP Systems appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

December 5, 2016 |

How Dashboards Give CFOs the Superpower They’ve Been Waiting For

CFOs now have the power to present and visualize data in compelling ways–enabling their teams to succeed. When watching the Iron Man films, it becomes impossible not to fantasize about three things: Tony Stark’s luxury car collection; his impressive busin......

CFOs now have the power to present and visualize data in compelling ways–enabling their teams to succeed. When watching the Iron Man films, it becomes impossible not to fantasize about three things: Tony Stark’s luxury car collection; his impressive business success; and his access to advanced holographic dashboards that allow him to analyze data and share information with the rest of the Avengers to then, well, save the world. Although technology isn’t at a point yet where we can touch and manipulate data-powered holograms with a simple hand gesture, dashboards and BI technology have become a must-have for CFOs, allowing them and their teams to democratize data, understand the bigger picture and tell a story that mere numbers could never tell. Just look at an article on Forbes by Neela Pal, a consultant for Fiscal Management Associates, that highlights the importance of visualizing data: “Thoughtful financial analysis requires as many words as numbers. We encourage organizations to highlight meaningful variances — significant departures from budget — in financial reports. Variance analysis goes beyond identifying financial trends. Seeing the numbers visualized prompts the question: “Why did we bring in less revenue than projected this quarter?” A practical conversation ensues: “Our income is actually highly seasonal. Should our revenue budget be modified to reflect this?” Today, CFOs are expected to look ahead and be able to predict the future, while closely monitoring and improving organizational performance on the go. “Dashboards and key performance indicators are essential elements for driving businesses to execute the organization’s vision and strategy and provide management with a constant pulse of the company’s performance,” writes Deloitte partner Petra Hazenberg for CFO insights. “Dashboards display financial and non- financial performance indicators and facilitate enhanced steering of the organization’s key activities.” In other words, by having access to a clear and detailed picture of the present CFOs can predict the future of the company and direct it in the desired direction. When it comes to superpowers, such clairvoyant abilities—for example, being able to predict the outcome of different scenarios by drilling down and performing what-if analyses—are as close to a superpower as they can get. Now the CFO can be the hero the entire organization needs and deserves. The post How Dashboards Give CFOs the Superpower They’ve Been Waiting For appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

November 4, 2016 |

Why Finance Pros Are More Capable Than ‘Mort’

Yes, Excel spreadsheets are democratizing the problem-solving capabilities of many people, but those on the CFO’s team may have the most to gain. What’s more difficult – going through account reconciliations manually, or creating the next Facebook? Financi......

Yes, Excel spreadsheets are democratizing the problem-solving capabilities of many people, but those on the CFO’s team may have the most to gain. What’s more difficult – going through account reconciliations manually, or creating the next Facebook? Financial reporting or coming up with an alternative to Uber? These may not seem like very fair comparisons, for several reasons. First, the more finance-oriented tasks are just that, tasks. They are things that have to be done on a recurring basis as part of a job. They have nothing to do with innovation that leads to a game-changing start-up that gets valued by billions in Silicon Valley – or at least that would be the assumption. A recent story on Quartz, however, suggested that developers and finance professionals share at least two things: an interest in solving problems and a high degree of aptitude for using a relatively simple software program: Elite programmers spend years in universities or hacking in their bedroom to master arcane computer languages. But coding, at its most basic, is something millions of Americans already do every week. It’s called Microsoft Excel. The spreadsheet application, like WordPress Visual Basic and Salesforce, gives anyone a simple way to program the sort of logical instructions computers can run—and that once required coding skills. In that sense, the Quartz piece, argues, everyone may be some form of software developer even if they don’t describe themselves as such. Instead, they could use Mort, the term Microsoft uses to describe professionals who aren’t quite programmers but who nevertheless apply some of the same technologies and techniques to address business needs. The idea of “Mort” is far removed from the way we typically think of innovators. We tend to look to examples like Vitalik Buterin, a 22-year-old who has developed an alternative to Bitcoin called Ethereum. Fortune’s profile of his early years sounds almost like a textbook example of the emerging genius: “Given Legos to play with, Buterin didn’t assemble miniature towers, animals, or people. Instead, he made numerals,” the piece said. “When Dmitry bought his son his first computer at age 4, Buterin took to it instantly. ‘Excel was his favorite toy,’ says Dmitry.” We don’t have to live in a world of polar extremes from Buterin to Mort, though. Maybe there’s a breed of professionals in between – people who can harness the power of Excel with other tools that vastly increase what they can do to solve problems. If so, the most innovative thing to come next might be a world where the path to genius is much more within reach. The post Why Finance Pros Are More Capable Than ‘Mort’ appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

October 6, 2016 |

The Relationship Between CFO Leadership And Risk

Experts say financial executives need to ensure their organizations don’t make a wrong move — and success might mean earning the top job. Jumping out of an airplane — that’s risky. Rock climbing — also risky. Managing a company — the multitude and variety ......

Experts say financial executives need to ensure their organizations don’t make a wrong move — and success might mean earning the top job. Jumping out of an airplane — that’s risky. Rock climbing — also risky. Managing a company — the multitude and variety of risks make the others seem almost trivial. The risks in management are theoretically shared across the C-suite, but employees and shareholders know that at the end of the day, it’s the CEO who is ultimately accountable. That’s why it was interesting to see a scholarly piece on Knowledge@Wharton, published by the Wharton School of Business, which recently referred to the “CFO imperative” to take on more of the risk management mantle. “The bottom line is companies today find themselves in an economy where “uncertainty is high, innovations are disruptive, and reinvention is common,” the article says. “Traditional tools of risk management are no longer enough. These days, forward-thinking firms need to monitor changes to their ecosystem, conduct a deeper diagnosis of competitive challenges, make bold moves at the right time and redesign business models that co-create and reshape the environment, not just be reactive.” The article goes on to suggest that CFOs think of risks in as holistic a manner as possible. This includes not just examining market volatility or macroeconomic factors but even cyber-threats from hackers. There’s no question that mastering risk management in this way would make CFOs even more valued by their organizations — perhaps even valued enough to get a promotion. CNBC recently reported on a survey of more than 200 financial executives in the U.K. that showed a whopping 86% have dreams of one day taking on a CEO position. They know they’re in competition with the heads of marketing, sales and even IT, but they believe they have an edge: According to the survey results, CFOs reckoned they would be ideal candidates for the role due to their knowledge in investor stakeholder management, their economic and business awareness and finance and data-driven business decisions. This doesn’t specifically mention risk, but the case could be made that excellence in all the areas described above would naturally involve a proven propensity for mitigating or managing them. In fact, data-driven business decision-making is not merely about identifying growth opportunities or cost savings but taking better, more calculated risks to do so. Even if they don’t land the CEO’s job, CFOs can become role models for risk management that could change the way organizations are run. That’s the real imperative. The post The Relationship Between CFO Leadership And Risk appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

September 28, 2016 |

Banks need a CFO. Major retailers need a CFO. But a farm? Hmmm. . .

Many people might still equate farming as a relatively low-tech enterprise involving small teams. In fact, the opposite is often true – farming can be a high-cost business that needs as much strategic planning and foresight as some Fortune 500 firms. The o......

September 22, 2016 |

The Big Picture Thinking CFOs and Their Teams Need To Cultivate

It’s not like anyone in finance walks around all day thinking, “I’m a global citizen!” How they work on a day-to-day basis, however, should say a lot about how international their perspective has become. A possible role model in this regard is Shyrose Janm......

It’s not like anyone in finance walks around all day thinking, “I’m a global citizen!” How they work on a day-to-day basis, however, should say a lot about how international their perspective has become. A possible role model in this regard is Shyrose Janmohamed, CFO of TFS – Canada’s International School (formerly Toronto French School). She was among those recently profiled by Canada’s Globe & Mail in a special series about changes in the finance department at major organizations. She suggested that while a lot of the forecasting and analysis CFOs and their teams do focuses on internal or local information, true leadership in this area demands keeping a close eye on what’s happening all over the world. “It’s more than just numbers. You sit right next to people and create budgets collaboratively because everybody needs to be on the same page,” she told the newspaper. “Gone are the days where the finance people sit in their offices, crunch the numbers and dole out money.” The question is, how do you achieve that kind of global outlook? It’s not just enough to stay on top of the daily news, obviously. There are lots of sources of information, but the first step is really ensuring you have the tools and infrastructure to properly manage a range of data sources that touch on myriad factors that could influence business performance. The next step might easily be overlooked, but a recent report from Deloitte is trying to make sure CFOs give it more attention. This is what the consulting firm describes as setting a “talent agenda” for finance. This involves hiring the right people, of course, but also thinking deeply about how you manage them and arm them with the techniques that will establish a strong development and succession plan. One approach stood out to Deloitte in particular: Experiential learning is very powerful. It enables executives to develop their own tacit knowledge and expertise in context. It shifts from theory and exposure to learning by action and having to respond to the consequences of their individual choices . . . What was important was having “a great boss” and a sponsor who put the individual through a learning-by-doing experience versus being just a mentor. Finance teams learn quickest – and best – by getting hands-on with data and the processes that shape decisions. This, in turn, will lead them to look more broadly at the landscape they work in, far beyond the confines or an office or cubicle. The post The Big Picture Thinking CFOs and Their Teams Need To Cultivate appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

September 9, 2016 |

What Makes a Performance-Driven CFO

Do finance leaders need a new job title to reflect their focus areas, or is it really about walking the walk? Where there were once chief marketing officers, there are now chief brand officers. VPs of HR are now sometimes referred to chief people officers.......

Do finance leaders need a new job title to reflect their focus areas, or is it really about walking the walk? Where there were once chief marketing officers, there are now chief brand officers. VPs of HR are now sometimes referred to chief people officers. This makes it only natural that something similar might happen with CFOs. In a recent interview with The Australian newspaper, executive and co-founder of Sheldon Harris Consulting, John Sheldon, discussed just how challenging it has become to source finance leadership talent. He suggested that this is in part due to the rise of CFOs being re-imagined as “chief performance officers” — putting an extra emphasis, not on the fact that they look at financial information, but that their work leads directly to improved organizational performance. “Their role will include performance improvement and strategy — we’re now living in a digital world and disruption happens daily,” he said. “They’ll look at that disruption and what it’s producing, how do you harness that and put it to the organization, and somebody has to pull that together. The requirements of the role are much more than we’ve ever seen before at this level. There isn’t going to be a queue of 100 people who can do it.” The notion of a CPO may align well with the fact that corporate performance management using Excel has evolved to the point where it is easily available via the cloud and can connect to something as fundamental as spreadsheets. Still, there has to be more to this increased emphasis on performance than merely giving CFOs a fancier job title, doesn’t there? FEI Daily may have gotten close to a glimpse of what the specific concerns of a more performance-minded CFO look like when it interviewed an executive from ERP vendor SAP: When I talk to CFOs, they say, ‘Look, I want insights. I want to be able to make decisions on things. I want to know that if I have a short-term cash-flow issue in one of my emerging countries, and I’m going to miss payroll, that I can find access to a low-interest, overnight loan that I can get from a variety of vendors and that I can get an instant decision on that. And I can’t do that unless I know my cash position.’ Really, at the CFO level, it’s more about insights, it’s more about the narrative. The narrative in question is really a story about how companies become more proactive, agiler and ultimately better at judging when and how to act. The person living and breathing that narrative might be called the CFO or the CPO — it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the hero of the narrative wins in the end. The post What Makes a Performance-Driven CFO appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

September 6, 2016 |

What ‘The Vanishing COO’ Trend Means For CFOs

Operational executives are less prevalent in the Fortune 500, but that doesn’t mean companies can ignore operational excellence. If there’s one person whose role you could safely assume is reasonably secure, it’s probably the CEO’s second-in-command. The s......

Operational executives are less prevalent in the Fortune 500, but that doesn’t mean companies can ignore operational excellence. If there’s one person whose role you could safely assume is reasonably secure, it’s probably the CEO’s second-in-command. The statistics around chief operating officers, however, suggest otherwise. According to the 2016 Volatility Report from recruiting from Crist Kolder, which looks at executive turnover and retention across a variety of senior levels, there has been a 15% decline in the number of companies that employ a COO over the past 10 years. There is some differences across sectors – technology and industrial companies are less likely to have a COO in place, while nearly 40% of service companies utilize this role – but the overall trend seems clear. “The COO’s role continues to diminish,” Peter Crist, chairman for Crist Kolder, told the Wall Street Journal. “The vacuum in that role allows the CFO’s prominence to continue.” To some extent, this makes intuitive sense. “Operations” can encompass a wide spectrum of the business, from manufacturing and logistics to sales and marketing. The goal for a COO, in part, would be to ensure everything in the organization runs efficiently and effectively. The bottom line for CEOs, however, is the same bottom line that is monitored and reported on by CFOs. As they gain a greater foothold in not only assessing the current state of revenue and expenses but forecasting how capital can be effectively allocated for maximum return, CFOs have a natural advantage in tying operations more closely to business performance. That’s not to suggest this is at all easy to do, of course. In fact, a recent article in the Economic Times of India put a spotlight on how CFOs are taking on many of the things that might have once preoccupied the COO and several others on the senior leadership team: It has almost become jugglery. Raising capital, dealing with investors and lenders while understanding the evolving nature of the business and hunt for opportunities to grow has become the new mandate of CFOs. This needs a lot of operational and managerial role skills that come in beyond accounting. If the COO role is on the way out, it’s obviously not because there isn’t value in what they’ve historically done. In fact, it was back in 2006 that the Harvard Business Review looked at some of the key challenges and concluded that one of the problems is that COOs’ job descriptions haven’t been well-defined. Those of CFOs, meanwhile, are being rewritten before our eyes as technology changes the impact they can have. Ultimately, what’s important is not which titles remain in the C-Suite. It’s what those who make up that team deliver back to the business. The post What ‘The Vanishing COO’ Trend Means For CFOs appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

September 3, 2016 |

The Divine and Unbeatable Nature of Data-Driven CFOs

Some are putting up CFOs on a pedestal, while others can’t wait to take them down a peg. What really matters is how they bring value to their organizations–and that should be the main characteristic they’re judged for. No one is saying financial executive......

Some are putting up CFOs on a pedestal, while others can’t wait to take them down a peg. What really matters is how they bring value to their organizations–and that should be the main characteristic they’re judged for. No one is saying financial executives have a “God complex,” but the influence of the CFO role is starting to generate almost religious fervor among some observers. Take a recent article in Manorama, a newspaper based in India, headlined “It’s The Era Of CFOs In Corporate World.” The op‐ed piece by P. Kishore looks at how the leadership of finance departments has risen to such a degree of importance that there may be no stakeholder in the C‐suite with greater influence, including those with an even more senior title. “There was a time when subordinates obeyed a CEO’s order as the Word of God. In the current set‐up, CFOs have the power to strike down that ‘Word’ if necessary,” the article said. “A CFO is responsible for the financial aspects of all company transactions, apart from overseeing auditing and accounting. She conducts surprise field visits to check whether the operations matched the data record.” This portrait of omnipotent CFOs suggests financial leadership is simply a matter of continuing to wield power and enjoying the fruits of it. As more hard data about CFOs comes to light, however, the wisdom of their judgment will inevitably come under greater scrutiny. As proof, just look at a research initiative from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, titled The Equity Risk Premium in 2016. It looks at all the variables CFOs say go into their decision‐making, and what level of caution they employ. A post on MarketWatch wondered if that level of caution is, in fact, too high: It turns out the typical CFO doesn’t want to OK a project unless it offers a return on investment of at least 14% — even though their company can borrow for half that . . . Sure, you wouldn’t OK a project unless it offered a healthy return over your cost of capital. You want to make a profit, and you want a margin of safety. But demanding a return that’s twice your cost of capital is quite something. There might be more to this data than meets the eye, of course, but it suggests that in some cases finance leaders lack all the information they need to feel confident in taking on the risks that their organization wants or needs to pursue. The value of leveraging technology to not only better organize and access data lies not only in de‐risking more decisions, but being better able to explain why something like a 14% return is the best possible course of action. To err is human, of course, and despite the hype, CFOs are mere mortals. To achieve true data‐ driven decision‐making though? That’s as close to divine as we’re likely to get. The post The Divine and Unbeatable Nature of Data-Driven CFOs appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

August 16, 2016 |

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The Must-Have Quality For Future Finance Leader

How CFOs Found the Ultimate Cure for Faulty ERP Systems

How Dashboards Give CFOs the Superpower They’ve Been Waiting For

Why Finance Pros Are More Capable Than ‘Mort’

The Relationship Between CFO Leadership And Risk

Banks need a CFO. Major retailers need a CFO. But a farm? Hmmm. . .

The Big Picture Thinking CFOs and Their Teams Need To Cultivate

What Makes a Performance-Driven CFO

What ‘The Vanishing COO’ Trend Means For CFOs

The Divine and Unbeatable Nature of Data-Driven CFOs

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CFO Leadership

The Must-Have Quality For Future Finance Leader

How CFOs Found the Ultimate Cure for Faulty ERP Systems

How Dashboards Give CFOs the Superpower They’ve Been Waiting For

Why Finance Pros Are More Capable Than ‘Mort’

The Relationship Between CFO Leadership And Risk

Banks need a CFO. Major retailers need a CFO. But a farm? Hmmm. . .

The Big Picture Thinking CFOs and Their Teams Need To Cultivate

What Makes a Performance-Driven CFO

What ‘The Vanishing COO’ Trend Means For CFOs

The Divine and Unbeatable Nature of Data-Driven CFOs