WC CFO TheStrategicCFO#44 Online NZ Final - Flipbook - Page 1
Anders Liu-Lindberg
Co-founder, COO and CMO
Business Partnering Institute
Anders Liu-Lindberg is the co-founder, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing
Officer at the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to
Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more 8,000 members. Based in Denmark,
Anders has over ten years’ experience as a business partner at the global transport and
logistics company Maersk, he is the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance
Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with 40.000+ followers.
2020 has already thrown a number of local and global challenges at finance
leaders. This article further examines the CFO’s role in an organisation
in terms of defending against, predicting and creating disruption.
The Old Fashioned CFO
The Strategic CFO
Starting with the old type of CFO who is
focused on backward looking financial
reporting, control, and compliance
and how to keep up with regulation it
is clear that this type of CFO won’t do
you much good when facing disruptive
forces in your industry. The only way
this CFO will help you is if disruption
comes from the legislative side via deregulation or opening of new markets.
Having someone who keeps track of
these developments could be of some
benefit. Most often though disruption
happens because someone finds a way
to utilize new technology through
innovative business models. This is
something an old school CFO will
know nothing about.
As we move on through the types of
CFO and their answers to disruption it is
assumed that they encompass the skills
of all the former types. Naturally, that
will rarely be the case hence companies
might prefer different types of CFOs
depending on their approach towards
disruption. The strategic CFO should
both be able to offer some prediction in
terms of where disruption strikes next
as well as part of the solution. This is
due to the understanding of the market
the company operates in and how the
company should develop in the coming
years. The CFO will help identify what
capabilities or products the company is
lacking in order to prevail against future
disruption.
The Analytical CFO
The Tech-Savvy CFO
How about the CFO that creates
transparency through a deep
understanding of the numbers and who
knows how to lay out the land for the
rest of the senior management team?
Understanding exactly what goes on in
your company at all times should make
for a good defensive strategy against
disruption. As soon as other companies
are threatening your bottom-line the
analytical CFO will pick up on it and
alert the rest of the management
team. This CFO will, however, lack
an understanding of why disruption
is happening and will not be able to
offer much in terms of how to solve the
problem or predict it in the first place.
Clearly with a lot of disruption having
it’s starting point in technology, despite
the need for having an innovative
business model being even more
important, having a tech-savvy CFO
could make all the difference in
the world. A tech-savvy CFO will
continuously upgrade and transform
the company’s system landscape and
infrastructure to give it flexibility and
a constant boost to productivity. Today
in order to an effective CFO you need
to have at least some knowledge of
technology’s impact on your company.
Better yet if you are completely on
top of this area as you will otherwise
find it hard to keep up with changing
environment around you. The techsavvy CFO will ensure you are always
at least on par with the competition
in terms of disruption and most likely
ahead of most since it will not be
technology that causes your downfall.
The Disruptive CFO
The one thing a disruptive CFO does
differently than the sum of all the other
CFOs is asking the question of: “what
comes next?” Change is constant and
disruption could be lurking around the
next corner however the disruptive
CFO plays offense and will spend
time discussing with industry peers,
academics and entrepreneurs on where
disruption strikes next and how your
company can be part of it. The days of
a CFO playing defense are over and in
order to support the CEO best possible
the CFO needs to be concerned with
how to keep developing the company’s
business model to not only win in the
market now but also define and win in
the market in the future.
Few companies have a disruptive CFO
and current hiring trends would suggest
that most companies on the look-out
for a new CFO are only aiming for the
tech-savvy one. That means if you can
crack the code on how to be a disruptive
CFO you will have a strong place in the
market as you are offering something
truly unique to an organisation.
What type of CFO or finance
professional are you?
CFOMagazine.com.au
