The Ledger

Four Traits of Effective Finance Leaders

“CFOs are expected to wear many hats: Strategic partner, relationship builder, change agent and technology champion. But ultimately, a CFO’s top priority is to ensure sustained financial performance for the organization.”

CFOs are under increasing pressure to do it all. To become more effective in their position, they must align their efforts with their organizations’ highest priorities and become personally effective at facilitating change and shaping their company’s strategy. This means finance leaders need to focus on fewer things, even as the organization makes more demands on their time. According to Gartner, “A CFO’s personal effectiveness is measured by their performance against their CEO’s financial expectations and how well their organization exhibits “efficient growth” behaviors.”

Gartner found that personally effective CFOs follow four common practices.

Read More at Smarter with Gartner >

How to Strategically Cut Costs Across the Enterprise

There are several steps businesses can take to develop a structural process for an enterprise cost reduction program in a way that positively impacts every aspect of the organization – not just the bottom line. For decades, businesses have made cost reduction a priority to increase profits and drive growth. In recent years, digital disruption, changing consumer preferences and fierce competition from new market players have entered the mix – posing a threat to margins and profitability. Today, rapid advances in technology are propelling organizations to undertake enterprise-wide cost transformations to remain agile, flexible and profitable in a time of constant change.

Read More at EY >

Re-imagine the Finance Function with Intelligent Technology

The CFO’s role is evolving, and intelligent technology is helping them work more efficiently and add greater value to the businesses. Intelligent technologies are no longer just a “nice to have” pipe dream; they’re a business reality that is changing how organizations function. Through an intelligent finance operating model, CFOs can help transform the finance function; moving from transactional and reactive to proactive and strategic. This isn’t just about achieving operational excellence, but reshaping the way businesses fundamentally work and engage with technology. CFOs are now able to overcome the burden of manual, time-consuming accounting and reporting by implementing intelligent finance applications and processes enterprise-wide to improve efficiency and free up time for more strategic tasks.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

A Futurist’s Framework For Strategic Planning

When it comes to long-term planning, many FP&A professionals should be able to answer these questions: Where do you want to have impact? What it will take to achieve success? How will the organization evolve to meet challenges on the horizon? These questions are the foundation for any achievable plan, both long and short term. Many businesses get stuck cycling between strategy and tactics, and while that process might feel like serious planning for the future, it results in a perpetual cycle of trying to catch up: to competitors, to new entrants, and to external sources of disruption. “Futurists” see their planning timelines as more of a cone that measures certainty and charts actions, rather than simply marking the passage of time as quarters or years. The result, ideally, is a flexible organization that is positioned to consistently and effectively respond to external developments.

Read More at The Harvard Business Review >