Validating The Vision And The Thought Process From A Desire And A Dream To Reality

Maximizing Long-Term Corporate Growth And Shareholder Value

Current generation Finance plays the role of understanding the constraints and the strengths of the organization and tries to leverage the outside world for its organization. For example, it can be a constraint in terms of cash flow to be spent on Capex, Finance steps in with models which make a structure for assets being lighter but without losing the need for meeting the aspirations and the dreams. Rather than a scorekeeper, Finance in today’s world is a sounding board for the organization.

Driving Better Business Results

Finance plays the pivotal role of validating the vision and the thought process from a desire and a dream to reality. Having said that, there has to be a flexibility and enablement to be created in the process and the interventions are to be done only when absolutely necessary. A CFO and his organization can help the business and the operations team in streamlining and fool proofing the process on an ongoing basis and set thresholds for exception supplemented by a periodic review process. Finance has to make the organization more agile in terms of the situations that arise from time and time and have a sound risk management in place.

Budgeting For Innovation

Budget Monitoring is very important and equally important is the Project Governance and review which is a key aspect which enables timely interventions rather than waiting for the event  to happen. A CFO plays a vital role in keeping the tab on costs at every stage of the project with appropriate decision points. Unexpected costs might surface, but a CFO plays a critical part to rationalize other costs to create some compensating factors either pushing for additional benefits or reducing costs in other areas. Unexpected costs do not mean non viability, but it may just be a temporary phase which with determination and monitoring can be overcome.

Financial Transformations

One major aspect which a CFO should focus on is analytics and dash boarding the entire critical parameters rather than waiting for the information to come in unconventional and inconsistent formats and lose time to make some reasoning out of it. This will come at a cost but it will make the organization more agile and alert and aid speedier decisions. Further the SAS and Cloud computing gives the organization tremendous flexibility and market positioning at a relatively lower cost in the growth phase.

"CFO and his organization can help the business and the operations team in streamlining and fool proofing the process on an ongoing basis"

Challenges Of The Indian Economy: Strategy-Setting, Financial Planning, And Risk Management

In the current economic scenario, organizations should be quick to notice and initiate actions based on triggers set in the system. Organizations are to be completely focused without much variety aspirations and with the prime focus of preserving cash, as much as possible. Cash flow and ruthless performance monitoring are in my view the best tools which will aid the organization.