What makes an outstanding cfo
Subscribe to our newsletter. Enter your details below. I accept to receive newsletters from Odgers Berndtson. Doing that well requires strong leadership, excellent communication and team-building skills.
To go from good to great, those qualities are just the start. In compiling this guide, we have drawn on our extensive experience of leading successful CFO searches across the globe.
The three hats a CFO must wear. Financial Foresight The ability to anticipate financial management issues and address them is an essential character trait in creating wealth for the company. Excellent Communication Skills Written and oral communication skills are an essential quality for a CFO, as they must be able to effectively communicate the financial health of the company to all stakeholders.
Confidence The ability to make decisions on behalf of the company with confidence and assertiveness are good character traits for a successful CFO. Integrity and Ethical Standards A strong will which ensures that one is always doing the right thing by upholding the ethical and professional standards and is honest in all transactions with the company and the stakeholders.
Perspective on Risk The willingness to try new things and take calculated risks to grow the business and improve the financial position of the company. Leadership skills A CFO should posses leadership qualities to enable him to delegate and oversee the financial operations of the company effectively. CFOs have a new role in capturing value for the organization: funding competitive differentiation. For 15 years, Gartner has examined how finance teams successfully drive both top- and bottom-line improvements.
See the key findings and learn how great CFOs drive value. As digital technologies continue to disrupt industries and markets, the finance function must also transform to leap competition. Discover 10 trends shaping the future of finance with new processes, technologies and business models. Congratulations on your chief financial officer CFO position! Gartner helps you transition confidently and succeed faster.
Great CFOs transform the finance business partnering model to provide the proactive, differentiated support the organization needs. Gartner guides CFOs in avoiding unsound decision making. Seventy percent of finance transformations fail to deliver the forecast benefits to the business. Access Gartner finance transformation best practices — sourced from leading finance teams — to ensure the success of your finance transformation in driving business profitability. Connect with our experienced practitioners and unbiased Gartner experts to discover innovative approaches to smarter business decisions and more.
Learn More. Finance needs to be embedded throughout the business, providing decision support to key functions such as commercial, operations, manufacturing. The most effective finance teams I have worked in had dedicated finance analysis and support attached to the most important functions in the business. This opens up the dialogue between finance and operations and it fosters a better flow of data between areas of the business. This makes the functions more accountable for their financial metrics and also allows the finance team to provide more insightful commentary through a better understanding of the business.
The CFO must paint the picture for the business and translate the financial data into meaningful commentary, trends, and actions. Access to timely, accurate data is a key enabler to finance productivity and decision support. Automated reporting and analytics allow more time to be dedicated to forecasting and predictive analysis. Technology will play an increasingly important role for the CFO, but its effectiveness depends on the accuracy, availability, and consistency of data, and on robust, integrated technology infrastructure.
Many companies are still struggling to put these foundations in place. To succeed, CFOs will have to be champions and stewards of digital technology. CFOs must adapt to new technology and be at the forefront of ERP implementations and cloud-based solutions. A common mistake I have observed in large scale ERP implementations is that the project does not get resourced with the right skills. The finance function is now increasingly being assessed in terms of its effectiveness its ability to deliver what the business needs rather than a narrower focus on its efficiency its cost in serving the business.
As we have seen, the CFO role is developing and expanding. The CFO of the future will add most value as a business and strategic partner to the CEO, being commercially savvy and managing external relationships.
But are CFOs ready? Do they have the necessary skillset to meet the new requirements of the role? We see evidence of a stronger and more capable finance function and CFO, which contributes to their growing influence. However, the picture is not always rosy. In order to gain the skillset required to perform the role, the finance career path looks very different than it did previously. One must:. Investment in digital technology will be vital in managing complexity and driving productivity.
The CFO must raise their game in managing, analyzing, and presenting data in a way that yields the greatest value for the business.