As this unprecedented year comes to a close, no one is probably happier to see it go than your CFO. When your business had to pivot due to the global pandemic and precarious market conditions, it was your CFO who not only faced the sudden change, but owned it and helped navigate your business through the uncertainty.
So if you’re wondering what every CFO is wishing for before they head out for their hard-earned and well-deserved breaks over the holidays and return recharged to face quite possibly another challenging year ahead, we’ve identified the top three things that will be on every CFO’s holiday wish list.
There’s no time for guesswork In today’s rapidly-evolving world. To enable CFOs to make faster, data-driven business decisions, the top three things that should be on every CFO’s holiday wish list include a complete planning tool, greater cross-functional collaboration and opportunities to learn, grow and connect.
1. A Complete Business Planning Platform
When your business is not equipped to quickly adapt to rapidly evolving market conditions, like the ones experienced in 2020, there’s a lot at risk for your business and your CFO knows it. That’s why a complete business planning platform that includes full-stack business intelligence (BI) capabilities should be at the top of every CFO’s wish list. An easy-to-use BI data connector will help automate and simplify your budgeting and forecasting processes and integrate your data into a single source of truth means your CFO can spend less time chasing down numbers and more time focusing on your overall business with accurate numbers. With this kind of data at their fingertips, they can then leverage other BI capabilities, such as descriptive and prescriptive analytics, to create at-a-glance dashboards and data visualizations in minutes to give the data more meaning. And when your CFO is able to tell a financial story with these engaging visuals and to further share insights that were gathered from ad hoc analysis and reporting, that’s when you can rest assured that your CFO will always take appropriate action with every business decision.
2. Greater Cross-Functional Collaboration
As the chief storyteller of your business, your CFO needs to play a pivotal role in not just reacting to change, like the one brought on by the pandemic, but creating change and leading it with a high-performance team. And that can only happen when your CFO and finance team are able to step into other areas of the business and see data—financial and non-financial—from every angle. This involves connecting the dots between departments—finance, HR and operations—so your CFO can get to the bigger business picture to inform strategic decision making. This complete view of the business can only be achieved when all raw, cross-departmental data is translated into a single source of truth. When your forward-thinking CFO has the right tools and technology to drive greater cross-functional collaboration, only then can a truly unified vision of your business occur throughout your entire organization.
3. Opportunities To Learn, Connect and Grow
Your CFO may be your business’s superstar, especially after the year we’ve had, but getting insights from other successful CFOs, thought leaders and peers can only elevate that status even more as everybody continues to navigate the rapidly changing business environment ahead. That’s why connecting with others in a unique destination for finance and operations professionals to learn, connect and grow together—like at PlanToGrow.com—when opportunities for personal connections are limited is so important. PlanToGrow is a CPE-accredited digital learning and event platform that supports business leaders with free access to best practices, professional development, peer insights and tutorials live and on demand. And best of all, when they can stay connected, access content and pursue ongoing professional development where, when and how they want, they’ll still be your business’s superstar but also bring all of those new insights, best practices and experiences to the table.
