Becoming a successful CFO in the modern financial space is more demanding than before. However, they also need to upgrade themselves to become a strategic partner and use technology to drive the growth of businesses for the future.
Here are the skills for CFOs.
1. Financial planning & analysis
For a strategic CFO, it is important to have assertive financial planning skills and the power to analyze financial moves. This skill is necessary to produce a data-driven plan and make decisions to handle finance operations and performances.
Analysis requires a comparison of performances, calculating ROI of sales, tech platform usage, and more. So, CFOs are required to take a more proactive approach to data insight to boost operations.
2. Reporting and forecasting
Reporting and forecasting are the key areas in which CFOs need to intervene. In this, they should ensure financial professionals have proper access to systems.
Whereas CFOs find opportunities to dig deeper into the information extracted from dashboards to take insights and build the required financial structure across the organization.
CFOs should analyze reporting and forecasting for the latest income statement, balance sheets, cash flow statement, and customer- and product-level segmentation.
3. Risk management and Mitigation
In the era of digital finance, CFOs should take a role in pushing teams to assess risks and regularly address solutions for mitigation.
At the same time, CFOs should look at risk management and opportunities to create potential commercial openings. CFOs should be prepared with this to minimize supply chain disruptions, neutralize risks, and increase market share through more sales.
Also Read: How CFOs can Focus on Building Financial Resilience
4. Digital transformation
CFOs’ main function is to get reports from department heads for new developments and opportunities in operations and functionalities. CFOs can also get insights into constant work cycles within tight timetables, like urgent analysis requests to boost acquisitions.
Moreover, they should examine more ways to automate back-office operations to remove repetitive tasks and save time and money.
Read More: Top 10 must-have CFO skills to be really successful