3 strategic leadership goals to unleash your finance function

Scorekeeper. Analyst. Collaborator. The roles of CFOs and finance functions have evolved to encompass bigger and broader concepts as companies increasingly look to them for sources of savings and new revenue. In PwC’s August 2023 Pulse Survey, 89% of finance leaders say striking the right balance between cost cutting and investing for growth is a top challenge to transformation.

To find that balance point, finance organizations can’t be constrained by the status quo. Leaders should redefine the role for future finance executives, take the reins when providing better business support and be first-movers in their organizations and companies. Being obsessed with these outcomes means making bold choices. Here’s how finance can get it done.

Long gone are the days of accounting ledgers and month-end reports. Across industries, leading finance functions are at the core of business strategy — guiding reporting, yes, but also analysis, forecasting and corporate strategy. Finance functions can now show, through data analysis, where operational opportunities lie not just in finance but throughout an organization, and this may mean redefining the role and scope of what financial leaders fundamentally do.

Consider the adoption of new automation technologies at a company. Without seasoned financial acumen at the table, companies risk investing in tech without fully assessing the long-term costs of training, upkeep or impact on the rest of the organization. This can result in overcommitment of resources or underutilization of talent and capabilities. Finance leaders can provide insight into a holistic view of how new investments can be adopted and integrated into existing organizational frameworks, pinpointing areas where strategic investments can be ramped up and where legacy solutions continue to provide increased returns.

What you can do

• Look inward: Focus on finance and see where automation can help your teams to speed up and optimize once time-consuming tasks to help provide better, more reliable and speedier forecasts and analysis.
• Take stock: Should you still be forecasting at the same levels? Fundamentally challenge what your people are doing with their time, and whether you can reallocate them to bigger, grander purposes through automation.
• Set the tone: Finance leaders should be agents of change, but this change should come from the top down. CFOs can be beacons in the boardroom, challenging the status quo to make sure new business decisions have a tried and true, data-tested business case behind them for implementation.

Being a leader doesn’t mean finance acts alone. Providing better decision-making support in the boardroom means integrating finance’s experience throughout the business. Teaming with operations leaders, especially, can help you identify new opportunities for operational value.

Better collaboration and communication with finance means operations functions can leverage your experience to help improve the quality and speed of decision-making. This can mean redefining the metrics and KPIs your organization uses to gauge success and growth, or executing resource trade-offs to better allocate backing to the opportunities where they can have the most impact.

What you can do

• Assess your organizational structure: Do you have a finance team that’s aligned to support the different operations across your organization? Without aligned support, creating that linkage can be challenging and ad hoc.
• Reevaluate your KPIs: Many key performance indicators have been tried and tested over time, but getting more granular with your analysis and bringing in third-party data can help enrich your insights — and maybe even start you on the path to consider new KPIs.
• Enable your people: Finance team members should understand that their mandate is to seek value, not just report results. Doing that can require upskilling and enabling your teams with new technology.

Don’t just set the tone, set the pace. Be willing to be the first function or team in your organization to act, using new technology and new ideas to take charge of transformational strategy.

Positioning your financial acumen on the front lines of transformation can create a competitive edge. It can reduce costs and inefficiencies in broader adoptions, enable more agility and responsiveness as ideas change, and showcase your finance leadership and vision to the whole organization.

What you can do

• Meet challenges head-on: Transformations entail some level of risk and uncertainty, but who better to weigh those risks (and measure success) than finance? Use your functional know-how to make sure resources and capital are effectively assigned and allocated. Define clear metrics for success, own your KPIs and reflect on progress, regularly reevaluating and reallocating as needed.
• Make it a part of your culture: Build your corporate culture around innovation as well as return on investment (ROI). Encourage your teams to ask questions and try new things. Praise ambitious ideas even if they don’t always pan out and upskill upskill upskill. You may encounter challenges from existing systems or regulatory hurdles, but testing boundaries and experimenting are the kinds of risks that are likely worth taking.