How To Be A Great CFO For Driving Operational Gains

Be A Great CFO

What do you expect from a CFO? What the key strengths for CFO? Do you define a good Chief Financial Officer with financial insights, a few technical skills, accounting competence, and the ability to forecast and take calculated risks? To be a professional, modern, and good CFO, you need a lot more to keep up with the ever-evolving digital transformation.

What Abilities Required For CFO? | Top 7 CFO Requirements

You must be wondering exactly what makes a great CFO? Over the years, the definition of a great financial officer has modified as CFO duties and responsibilities have become more leadership-centric. 

A good CFO is smart enough to look beyond the numbers and play the role of a trustworthy strategic business partner to the CEO for maximizing investment, harnessing Big Data, and adapting swiftly. A successful CFO must have a keen eye for minute details, a deeper understanding of the company’s finances, a forward-looking mindset, and a macro view of the competitive market.

Let’s look at the characteristics and common key attributes of becoming a remarkable CFO!

  1. Excellent Leadership 

One of the essential traits of a great CFO is “strong leadership ability” because he will not only be responsible for bringing a talented team together but also for leading, motivating, guiding, and training them. Officer must be a problem-solver with the front-runner confidence to make critical decisions for handling disrupted relationships with stakeholders.

The role of CFOs is the proposer of the company’s growth which requires unparalleled headship qualities so they can envision the bigger picture and achieve the company’s business goals by utilizing their tactical skills.

  1. Master Technical Skills

If CFO lacks IT knowledge, managing the finance department might get tougher!

A CFO must make profitable decisions about the company’s expenditures and make its procedures more efficient through automation. BUT, it is only possible if the chief officer is tech conversant and has the capacity to adopt and implement the newest technology solutions. As Sarah Spoja, CFO of fintech provider Tipalti, explains, “CFOs should be thinking about how they can build a tech stack that will help them and their team be as successful as possible. That means both reducing manual work and having the data and insights more easily attainable.”

Whether the finance chief is making a budget, carrying out analysis or auditing, ensuring compliance to standards, or implementing accounting principles, it is necessary to develop or refine their technical expertise to look closely at the organization’s finances.

  1. Comprehend Real-Time Financial Data

If the CFO fails to handle data and cannot appreciate the importance of delivering in-the-moment insights when needed, the enterprise will never grow!

To improve internal efficiencies, make profitable decisions, limit instability, foster a friendly relationship with global companies, and impress new clients, the CFO should be familiar with the numbers and must have the ability to perform analytics of the existing financial data to help the CEO take executive choices without struggle. A good CFO must have a strong analytical aptitude.

CFO with the proper knowledge and industry experience is more likely to succeed in the argument against competitors, scaling up the company’s growth exponentially.

Comprehend Real-Time Financial Data

  1. Forward-Looking Strategic Mindset

How to be a CFO who is appraised by every member?

The simplest answer to “how to be a great CFO?” is “to be able to forecast risks through analysis and help the company accomplish all financial goals by following strategic, forward-thinking models.”

A good, effective CFO is the one who always thinks and progresses strategically, the one who is always ready to take strategic initiatives, the one who acts as a change leader with a forward-looking approach, and the one who partners with the board of directors to forecast the future using numbers.

The finance officer should follow the “ask, analyze, and strategize” attitude for revealing opportunities, identifying challenges, analysing diverse viewpoints, making impactful real-time analysis, and expecting change without succumbing to pressure.

As explained by Steve Priest, eBay’s CFO, “Helping them think about what’s around the corner and the trajectory of the company, particularly in an ever-changing environment, is incredibly important. To do that, finance leaders need to be looking forward and anticipating change.”

  1. Adaptability & Innovation management

Modern CFOs are considered “good” only if they show the capability of:

  • Making the most out of the available resources to run a company’s finances effectively
  • Focusing on process improvement to adapt to the existing situation
  • Revolutionizing a highly motivated working environment which supports originality
  • Retaining employees with his organizational skills
  • CFO strategy for internal departments should reflect radicalism
  • Adapting the newest advances in technology for innovation
  • Refining the company’s talent recruitment strategy to bring in the best candidate
  • Utilizing automation solutions and management tools for effortless working

CFO activities must reflect modernization. Ash Noah, vice president of CGMA External Relations at the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), emphasizes innovation and advises against relying on old practices anymore. He says, “Making your business resilient and strengthening your business model is what the CFO of the future will have to do. The old way of thinking stifles innovation and ruins new business creation.”

  1. Best Style to Communicate & Collaborate

CFO duties are nearly endless, and to become the best CFO, first, you must be aware of different communication styles and understand what style suits the situation or audience. Second, you must choose the most professional, effective, and comprehensible ways to communicate with your partners and competitors. CFO educational background might play a significant role here.

According to Brian Beckwith, CEO of Formation Capital, “Flex Communication Style” should be the priority. To become excellent communicators:

  • Always prefer a transparent communication
  • Uphold an engaging session
  • Make sincere and confident statements
  • Don’t forget to address critical issues
  • Stay interactive while sharing information with management
  • The conversation should be concise

When you know how to communicate being CFO, you will better coordinate company activities, carry out hiring procedures, manage offshore teams, and collaborate with other parties.

  1. Risk Assessment Skills

Where providing real-time insights is one of the primary CFO tasks and responsibilities, forecasting risks related to security, compliance, financial, personnel, or IT is also central to their job. A successful chief financial officer must not only recognize potential threats but also mitigate them to avoid a long-term business crisis. He should take responsibility for creating a strong defense against calculated risks within the operating framework.

In the opinion of executive recruiter Arnold, “Managing cyber risk specifically has now become front and center for CFOs. They’re partnering with their CIO to determine the risks and how to confront them across the entire organization.”

Leading Provider of CFO Services to Dubai-based SMEs

Who needs CFO services? Everyone does!

Profits Plus has flexible, affordable, and pioneering CFO accounting services to help grow companies operating in Dubai while meeting their all business needs. We deal in four leading accountancy firms. From hiring a skilled in-house CFO for internal audits to consulting our verified British accountants to understand VAT, Profits Plus offers a plenitude of services.

Top 3 Ways A CFO Can Help Your Business

Every business is sure to benefit from having a chief financial officer overseeing accounting and finances. These top-notch financial advisors help to keep all of your reports and bookkeeping up to date as well as give useful financial advice and strategy to keep your business on track and meeting margins.

But paying out AED 700,000 a year for a full-time CFO consultant can be a lot more than many smaller businesses, such as client companies, can reasonably spend. But before you count yourself out on being able to hire these useful consultants, did you know that part-time CFO services are making involved and dedicated financial analysis available to all businesses? With the possibility of paying for a CFO on an as need basis, there’s no reason why you can’t cash in on all of their knowledge and skills.

Chief financial officers supervise the accounting staff and on occasion controllers as well. They make sure that all of your accounting operations are in order and now play a bigger role in the planning and direction of businesses than ever before.

In fact, a CFO consultant in Dubai offers a lot of additional benefits:

  • Financial strategy, such as the development and execution of any new or existing plans.
  • Contingency planning to help see you safely through any soft markets and customer demand crises before they can happen.
  • Business analysis to pinpoint any possible issues that need to be rectified if you want to get margins back in line.
  • Business planning to help you meet or set up long term goals as well as forecasts to aid in planning.
  • The valuable insight that can challenge the way you view your business and help it to grow.
  • Extensive knowledge with other companies that will get them asking the right questions you should think about, as well as what strategies are proven to work.

Part-time CFO services can give you all of these benefits but only at the hours, you need. Whether it’s just a few days a week or even per month! They can be in the office regularly enough to make sure everything is running smoothly, and your financial operations are in order without you paying the salary of a full-time CFO consultant.

Their easier hire in and out also makes them the perfect resource to use to keep things running while your current CFO is out or if you’re looking to hire the right full-time CFO. Many part-time CFO services offer interim CFO’s to fit these small gaps so you don’t have to worry that your financial operations will fall apart while your current CFO is on medical leave or you’re currently searching for a new one.

You can also bring them in to temporarily head up projects that your other staff are too busy to get to. Have a massive sales opportunity coming up, but all of your workers are too tied up or inexperienced to assist? A short-term CFO can get it out the door and only need to be paid for the time that you need them. Along with that, their more temporary or part-time status also makes them much easier to dismiss as opposed to a full-time salary CFO consultant.

So if you’ve been feeling that your financial operations could use help, or if you’ve wanted the advice of a trained professional, a part-time CFO could be right for you. And with the ability to hire them on as need basis, there’s no reason why your business can’t have the same edge as the big guys.

If you need dedicated and professional CFO services at an affordable price and availability, profits plus accountants is the place to go. With an assortment of solutions and a sincere dedication to making your business a success, you’re sure to be well on your way to the growth and expansion you’ve always wanted.