The past year was one where the only constant was change.
Chief among that change was the evolution of the chief financial officer role from back-office bean counter and financial reporter to strategic advisor and corporate financial architect.
From Verizon to Airbnb, Google and beyond, 2023 saw organizations elevate their existing CFOs to newly created, more strategic roles, as the importance of the finance department transformed in step with an economic climate marked by tighter monetary policies, higher interest rates and increased scrutiny of budget management.
The finance role gained fresh organizational prominence during 2023 because in a macro environment where each day is different than the one before it, building a foundation of operational excellence, fine-tuned by continued process improvement, proved to be increasingly critical for success.
The CFOs that PYMNTS spoke to over the past year all reported that they spent 2023 shifting from a growth-at-all-costs mindset to one focused on managing growth efficiently while ensuring profitability, a navigational tack that required a bird’s eye view of business priorities and departmental needs.
In a world where technology continues to advance at a breakneck speed, savvy CFOs were able to keep pace and wield their role as investment decision-makers to capture efficiencies from innovations like artificial intelligence while maintaining a lean, hyper-focused organization.
Investments in people, technology and the business more broadly were all benchmarked against key return-on-investment measures, frequently with the help of new technologies and other digital innovations.
Long-standing investments in digital transformations increasingly bore fruit in 2023, as digital innovations including cloud computing, AI and automation, all combined to give finance teams a single source of insight into their businesses, and that beacon of truth was a guiding light that other departments found themselves returning to and measuring up against during the past year’s geopolitical turmoil and banking crises.
Read also: 12 CFOs on How SVB’s Collapse Transformed the Finance Department
While the basics of finance management, reporting and efficiency of financial operations continue to be at the heart of the CFO role, CFOs now find themselves deeply involved in collecting, analyzing and predicting financial data — all areas where digital innovations can accelerate organizational impact.
Non-strategic finance, largely made up of historic processes like manual data entry and payment issuance, has long been a cost center for organizations, and the back office of the CFO seat got a makeover in 2023 as businesses turned to effective automation implementation in search of greater process efficiency.
“You can’t control the geopolitical tensions, but what you can control is making your business stronger and more resilient during these times so that you come out the back of it a stronger company,” Bloomreach CFO Ninos Sarkis told PYMNTS in an interview posted in November. “…There’s a lot of relatively low-hanging fruit to make a business more efficient, more scalable and more automated.”
“Growth is going to turn around and come overnight,” Sarkis added. “Businesses need to be ready to facilitate that growth and ensure that they are ready to capitalize on it with a strong, scalable foundation.”
Momnt CFO Mark Satisky told PYMNTS in an interview posted in November: “The CFO’s role is to make sure that the business is prioritizing the investments that give the highest lift and the most bang for the buck.”
“A lot of companies are seeing the benefit in software development,” he added. “…I push our team to look for sort of small, medium and large wins through AI and automation. We are always looking to take frictions out of roles and make jobs more dynamic.”
Echoing that sentiment, Hinge Health CFO James Budge told PYMNTS in an interview posted in September that “finance departments, if they choose to be, can be at the leading edge when it comes to embracing these new systems, new opportunities, new ways of running processes and reexploring processes that may not have been efficient in the past. And AI is a huge part of that.”
After all, despite the rapidly evolving world, one thing has remained the same: CFOs are responsible for greenlighting most investments, including digital ones.
See also: Airbnb’s C-Suite Shake-Up Highlights Strategic Power Shift of CFO Role
As returns on investment, profitability flywheels and financial growth levers become canon to the rest of the business, the role of the CFO as a navigator only becomes more crucial to building a sustainable foundation, and then activating it.
“The most successful CFOs are those that think broadly and can open up the aperture beyond the financials,” VillageMD CFO Richard Rubino told PYMNTS in an interview posted in September. “…You have to look out three or five years. If you don’t have a strategic plan for your business, priority one is to make one. It is not a spreadsheet, it’s not a PowerPoint deck, it is a story that anticipates where the puck is going — because you want to be the first one there.”
Zayo Group CFO Jeffrey Noto told PYMNTS in an interview posted in June: “For a long time, finance was the reporter of what had happened in the past. Here are your results, go figure out how to be better. We’re now much more proactive and embedded in the business operations of the teams that lead to the outcome of the results.”
“It’s never been more important for the CFO to be a business adviser,” Altruist CFO Marc Greenberg told PYMNTS in an interview posted in September, emphasizing that the role has moved from a “metrics only” approach to one of being a “leader more generally.”
Along with the immutable aspect of a strong balance sheet and controlled-for financial fundamentals, having the right people will always be critical to the success of any organization, no matter the business landscape transformations.
“People are a company’s biggest assets,” NextRoll CFO Sue Choe told PYMNTS in an interview posted in June. “They can make or break any firm’s success and help you unlock the value of the business.”
While technology and data are essential, the right people, their retention and their continuous development are paramount.
“It is people, process and tools,” Cleo CFO Sameer Katiyar told PYMNTS in an interview posted in October, emphasizing that those are the three keys to success in any role. “You’ve got to focus on your people, you’ve got to ensure the appropriate processes are in place, and you need to be sure you are using the right tools.”
As we look to 2024, today’s CFOs are taking stock of the investments in people, processes and tools they made in the past year and crafting strategies for how to unlock their value in the months ahead.
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
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