This brief YouTube video by CFO Publishing of an interview with David Starr (CFO of The Edlong Corporation, a family-owned food manufacturing business) reveals the ever-changing role of the CFO.
Here are some insightful quotes from the interview:
“The role as the CFO has really evolved so that he or she is reporting to the future…. so that he or she is projecting and forecasting to where the company’s going and how long it will take for the company to get there.”
“I believe that the CFO is an active partner to the CEO. I think that now, more than ever, the CEO is looking for the CFO to be objective voice in the strategy-making for the company. The CEO is looking for the CFO to be a very important part of all the decision-making business perspective. The CFO, more than anybody else, knows how much on it’s going to cost to build out the company, to make sure that we enter the right markets, on how to spend money on fixed assets and capex. The CEO is looking to the CFO to help them but with that judgment and to help them
grow the company.”
“We’re using data for a variety of different things. We look at data for operational metrics not only on the company's performance financially but also operationally.’
“We look at how the company will do in the future. We look at data in order to measure Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] in order to asses how we’re doing now only to our own past history but to our competitors and to the markets as a whole.”
“We specifically look at data associated with how much time we spend on a customer and try to project the profitability for that customer and whether we spend enough time or not enough because for us it's important to add the most value to the customers. It’s important that we spend enough time with our customers and that we’re allocating time properly.”