Modern CFOs ‘Almost Like Mini-CEOs’ as Job’s Scope Expands

Today’s chief financial officers (CFOs) are often expected to add value to any aspect of the business, partner with the CEO and be ready to step into the CEO’s shoes if necessary.

“As I’ve seen the CFO evolution, more and more businesses are looking for strategic partners — almost like mini-CEOs — people who could be more engaged on the business side of things and have a point of view in every aspect of the business,” Rajat Bahri, CFO at Icertis, told PYMNTS.

Bahri joined Icertis in July with a background that includes financial leadership roles at public enterprises, pre-initial public offering (IPO) companies and technology firms.

At Icertis — which offers a contract intelligence platform that is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and validated by analysts — he is tasked with helping guide the company through its next phase of growth.

“The company has seen incredible growth over the last couple of years and is positioned really well,” Bahri said. “So, how can finance support that? I spend a lot of time around that and then focusing on putting the infrastructure in place so we can support the growth.”

Getting Ready to Go Public

Interviewed for the PYMNTS series “A Day in the Life of a Digital-First CFO,” Bahri said that at any company, when there’s a great deal of growth in the business infrastructure, the financial infrastructure falls behind.

So, CFOs of companies that plan to go public must have the right people, systems and automation in place to ensure that they close their books on time and accurately as well as forecast revenues, costs and key performance indicators (KPIs).

“Those are the types of things I’m focused on to basically get us public-ready over the next 12 or 24 months — whenever the markets open up,” Bahri said.

Focusing on Efficiencies

In the meantime, as companies wait for the funding environment to improve, their CFOs make sure they have enough cash on the balance sheet, that they have other instruments available to ensure the company doesn’t run out of cash if things get really delayed, and focus on efficiencies and seeing how people can become more productive.

“The good news for us is our growth is not slowing,” Bahri said. “Since our products drive a lot of [return on investment (ROI)], efficiencies and cost savings and revenue enhancement for our customers, they are looking for the same thing — our customers are looking for cost efficiencies, and our product is very well suited for it.”

While companies without that kind of growth are laying off people and cutting costs, Icertis is focusing on being prudent in adding costs and making sure the ROI is there on every incremental dollar the company spends.

Managing Contracts

Icertis runs on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, with customers generally signing contracts that are three to five years long and paying for each year upfront.

No matter the state of the economy, companies have contracts to manage. Beyond that, with the right insights, they can optimize those contracts to help negotiate better deals.

Bahri gave the example of a new customer that has 30,000 contracts worldwide. After analyzing them, Icertis informed the company that the contracts had inflation adjustments that would allow it to raise prices and increase its revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Those are the type of insights that we provide our customers, which drive their efficiencies,” Bahri said. “So, from that perspective, people are not looking to cut back on our type of spending — they’re actually looking to increase this type of spending going forward.”