Re-Skilling – A Key Component Of The CFO’s Role

1
Re-Skilling A Key Component Of The CFOs Role
2
The author examines the evolving role of a modern
day CFO and believes that for the survival of the
CFO breed, its essential to move out of the
comfort zone.
Atul Kumar Agarwal is the Chief Financial Officer
of MedPlus and has more than two decades of
experience in Finance and Accounting in
organizations like Tata Steel, PT Texmaco Group
(Indonesia), Genpact, AB-InBev India. He has
worked in the areas of Business and Corporate
finance that included business planning, capital
structuring, budgeting, creation of business
support system (ERP implementation), corporate
funding , working capital management, MA,
financial process outsourcing. Atul has hands-on
finalization experience of accounts, financial
audit, cost accounting, building cost systems and
activity based management. Amongst other
activities, he has been responsible for HR and
commercial activities. He has chaired performance
committees and advised boards on matters of
corporate performance and governance. Besides
being a permanent invitee on boards of various
organizations, he also worked as CFO and member
of board of Ab-InBev (India Operations) group
entity.
3
Worldwide, the profession of CFO has not just
undergone a change but is dynamically changing on
an ongoing basis that can be witnessed in our
daily lives as a CFO. This is due to constant
changes in the economic regulatory scenario
worldwide and the uncertainty of the impact this
would have on the organisational performance. The
CFOs role therefore is important not only as the
custodian, but as a successful change manager who
has the ability to ensure sustainability and
effect business goals at minimum risk. The CFO
has also moved on from a person just reporting to
the company head or CEO to the mainstream and is
the prime resource for shareholders/ boards/
other stakeholders who rely on this person to
take decisions and take the organisation forward.
The CFO is required to have pre requisite skills
and these are not just being good at numbers but
as a strategic action implementer who is required
to focus on key areas like sustained
organisational performance, proactive de- risking
of organisational challenges, ensuring corporate
governance and being futuristic about technology.
Some of these skills are as discussed as below
http//mycfo.in
4
Resourcefulness Having access to right people
and right information resource that can be
strategic business enablers. Quality and
timeliness of resource can hugely benefit the
organization. Relationship Change Management
Skills Ability to influence internal and
external stakeholders to get initiatives
implemented. A good amount of negotiating skills
clear communication skills is of great
importance especially with stakeholders whenever
there is a need to work on change-
management. Strategic Planning Skills Plan
organisational future well ahead and be ahead of
time. Create thought process that emulates
strategy into action in various challenging
scenarios and document it to enable future
successors to build upon.
http//mycfo.in
5
Analytical And Forecasting Forecasting is not
just playing with numbers. It has also to do with
gut feeling of the CFO that can be relied upon.
Besides having a good hand on the numbers, a CFO
also needs to have a few core team members who
can build on a dynamic business model that can
keep improving over a period of time. This
business model should be used to play with
different scenarios that can aid the CFO to
decide. Understanding Of Present And Future
Technologies Understanding technology is not
just to know the present and future hardware and
software requirements to take care of information
management but to understand the ever changing
dynamics that would support scalability, dilute
human intervention in operations that allows them
to focus on analytics and other high value-add
domains. He should also look at promoting
acquisition of intelligent systems that can build
strategic edge over competition. At this point, I
must say that the CFO is without doubt an
inevitable part of information management of the
organisation.
6
The CFO has to cut across boundaries in the
organisation to push certain initiatives. For
instance, lets take an example of an organisation
that is low on performance and is in a high
growth. The CFO knows that the best and the
quickest way of turnaround of performance can
happen with implementing KPIs (metrics) and then
bringing in a discipline that can monitor those
KPIs. The CFO constructs a list of performance
based KPIs related to sales, profitability,
liquidity, HR, logistics etc., creates
benchmarks, circulates monitors them. I had the
opportunity of doing this and it showed
tremendous results in the employee morale
especially when organisational performance
parameters started improving. At times, the CFO
may not get support at times from various stake
holders in an organisation, but he should cut
across boundaries to ensure that certain time
tested ways of performance improvement exercises
should be implemented to improve organisational
performance.
http//mycfo.in
7
Communications is an important attribute and soft
skill for a CFO to have, since the metrics and
expectations that are set for the Internal
(employees, board and shareholders) and external
(auditors, regulatory bodies, government
agencies) are relationship based and require
buy-in from all to succeed.
The CFO needs to constantly acquire new skill
sets with an aim to create sustained value as the
CFO is a powerful engine that not just designates
the person as a custodian of shareholder wealth
but as a value addition tool with sensors to
predict organisational challenges, mitigates risk
and factors them in his plan to ensure
continuity, growth and a zero surprise
environment.
http//mycfo.in
8
Todays CFO is highly stressed and pressured to
constantly improve the results. Cost control,
banking relationships, raising capital, financial
restructuring make todays CFOs position at the
centre of business as the CFO holds the key to
companys financial security. Hence the CFO also
needs to ensure that a good work life balance is
maintained.
MyCFO is Special Situation Finance and IT
service. MyCFO is useful to companies who are in
a High Growth Phase and to those, which have
specific, legacy issues that need resolution.
Main client groups are Family Managed Businesses,
PE Invested companies, Technocrat Promoters and
Large Corporates. MyCFOs focus is on actual
implementation and execution, rather than merely
on advisory with mandates executed to agreed
KRAs/ Balanced Scorecards. In terms of functional
areas
http//mycfo.in
9
MyCFO is most active in development of Business
Plans, Budgetary Systems, Developing
KPIs, Establishment of Advisory Boards, running
monthly business review meetings, Raising PE
funds, preparing for IPOs, Implementation of ERP/
BI (all these generally for FMBs, PE invested
companies and Technocrat Promoters) and in
resolution of relatively complex legacy issues,
IT roll out support, post merger integration
support (these in the case of Larger Professionall
y Managed corporates). For more details about the
MyCFO service, please get in touch with Deepak
Narayanan at deepak_at_wealthtree.in or visit
www.mycfo.in
http//mycfo.in
10
Read More On This Blog http//mycfo.in/blog/?p54
Official Website http//mycfo.in/ Like Us On
Facebook https//www.facebook.com/mycfo.in Foll
ow Us On Twitter https//twitter.com/mycfo1 Joi
n us on LinkedIn https//www.linkedin.com/compan
y/mycfo-india Find us on Google
https//plus.google.com/u/0/MycfoIn Watch Us
On Youtube https//www.youtube.com/channel/UCMYQ
39U3O8Pbvhtrp8hs6OA
11
(No Transcript)