You’re The New CFO: Top 6 Tips To Success

Know your team

It’s important to get to know your entire finance team. And quickly. Understand their priorities. Ask plenty of questions to get their feedback and insight. Listen intently. And often. Explain your vision, management style and team expectations. Don’t be hardcore and don’t make any drastic changes in your team until after your first 90 days. Keep an open-door policy and model the behavior and actions you expect from your team.

Ensure confidence in the financials

Your integrity as a new CFO is of paramount importance. If you suspect any issues with numbers being reported, you should initiate an audit immediately. If you find any discrepancies, notify the CEO and Board right away. Your credibility is on the line.

Make changes at the right pace

While you shouldn’t be afraid to make changes in the organization, don’t jump too quickly without understanding the full impact of those changes. Get a sense of the company’s culture, capacity and openness to change first. Identify three top priorities and then get input from all perspectives – your finance team and your other C-level executives and Board. For additional insight into how today’s CFO’s are expected to lead substantive change for their companies, check out this article from cfo.com.

Put the right metrics in place

Cash is King, and the flow of cash is your most important function as a CFO. You must have visibility into the right Key Performance Indicators within your company. You need a clear picture of where the company has been, where it is now, and where you want it to go. You can’t do this without having financial dashboards in place to see those important metrics. The better information you have, the better decisions you can make. For a deeper dive, see “How Dashboards Can Help You Predict The Future & What You Need To Know First”.

Implement technology solutions

You need the ability to capture, structure and make better use of your data. Identifying and managing the company’s most critical information is a task that your finance department has to own. Your team must be a well-oiled machine. That means their time and abilities should be maximized to best support your role as the financial leader of the company. They can’t be forced to rely on IT to create necessary reports. They can’t continue with highly manual processes or reporting limited to spreadsheets. The complexities they face in doing their jobs will impact your ability to establish credibility for the financial decisions and changes you wish to impose. You’ll need access to information on demand, and you can’t be waiting weeks or months to get financial reports. And you can’t do any of that without having a comprehensive business intelligence reporting tool in place.

Don’t let fear hold you back

While there are many BI tools on the market, studies show many executives are afraid that implementing a new solution would cause more headaches than it’s worth. They don’t want to make any changes because of the perceived disruption it’ll cause. Perception isn’t always reality. Case in point: if you implement the right financial reporting tool, you’ll save thousands of hours, tens of thousands of dollars (in wasted time alone), and your sanity (which is priceless).