Chief Financial Officer – What Constitutes Competency? ( II )

Senior executives with similar mindsets will compete along predictable lines, and the results would be more features added to the product offerings to the extent that the average consumers are overwhelmed by them and honestly speaking have no need for most of the esoteric features.

So on one hand, executives must develop a proposition that balances value and innovation. On the other, it must gain traction, and generates sufficient revenue to underpin superior economic profit. Hence the link between business corporate and financial strategies is getting more critical and it requires substantial effort and resources to manage value. So, is managing value mission-critical? The alternative to that: can we afford to ignore value-based management?

Increasingly, companies must reinvent in order to come up with the next generation of products to seek out uncontested market space and underpin revenue growth. As such, the task of communicating to investors, also known as investor relationship cannot be over-emphasised and is another responsibility of the CFO.

Being the finance top-dog , the CFO is expected to take the lead in drawing up a strategy roadmap. Success is measurable in terms of how well the company has made the transition into value creation. The CFO plays a vital role in partnering with the CEO by acting as his confidant on major strategic and operational issues, as well as the no less important tasks of overseeing the financial and planning functions i.e. budgeting, internal control and financial management. He must be visionary in creating value, and this includes implementing a framework for evaluating plans with value creation potential.

Next: His job scope would include something along the following lines:He must be fearless in challenging the norms......