How confident are you that the work you do makes your company more valuable? That should be a key question for a CFO. Since I came to this publishing enterprise in 2007, I’ve often heard opinions voiced (even by some finance chiefs) that CFO work does not, many cases, really add value.
Now think about this. Regardless of your own level of self-confidence, how confident is the rest of the company that you’re adding value?
You might ask, “Why should I care?” Well, you should, I think. If nothing else, other viewpoints may contribute to greater self-awareness. But as it turns out, in many respects finance’s view of itself may not be all that different from everyone else’s.
There’s plenty of food for thought around that in a new white paper I stumbled upon this morning. Its content is based on a survey of 106 corporate workers by a new finance-information outfit called EPM Channel. Sixty-one percent of the respondents were finance professionals, the rest working in other areas of the company. Among the latter group, 39% were senior executives, 44% were other managers, and 17% were staff.
It’s interesting that the finance folks and the others generally agreed that “Finance is spending too much time on mechanics and putting out fires, and not enough time on value-added analysis,” the report says. Both sides also agreed that finance is not living up to its potential, though the non-finance folks were more likely to cite “Finance does not do enough to develop an understanding of the underlying business” as a cause.
The finance side put some of the blame on technology failures. Finance wants to make its processes more efficient, hence freeing up time for value-creating efforts, but identified “a lack of enabling technology to make finance effective” as a top hindrance.
“All sides also agree that ‘strategic thinking’ is a critical area for training and development, but regrettably few have actually directed resources there,” the report says. “Likewise, senior finance executives overwhelmingly identified influence without authority as a key area for training and development, but only 5% have made any investment of time or money there.”
Take a look at the report, think about where you stack up with regard to these and the many other topics addressed in it, and then, if you don’t mind, post a comment to this blog. Where do you think you have the most room to add value?
By Dave McCann, from: http://www3.cfo.com/blogs/human-capital-careers/human-capital-careers-blog/2013/03/Memo-to-CFOs-They-Know-Who-You-Are