Data And Integration Drive CFO Role Evolution Beyond “Bean Counters”

The jobs of finance teams are changing more and more because of holistic business planning and digital tools.

This is because macroeconomic headwinds create friction points that force organizations to use more centralized and streamlined strategies for their working capital and spending needs.

Kevin Held, CFO of cloud-based treasury and liquidity solution management company Hazeltree, talked about how important it is for finance and accounting teams to take a big-picture view of their organization’s needs and act on that view. He also spoke about how the responsibilities of the CFO office have changed for his career.

“You know,” Held said, “finance and accounting teams have become much more of a business partner than just the ‘bean counter’ we were before.”

Held has been in the business for a long time and has seen how it has changed. Held as the eighth CFO, he has worked in his successful career, which has been going on for more than 30 years.

“Accounting and finance have changed so much over the years, and it’s essential to stay on top of the changes taking place with the industry,” he said, adding that “getting systems in play that talk to each other and improve workflows is very key to what’s happening across the industry.”

A Widespread Digital Revolution

The CFO office needs to take a more integrated approach to plan for business growth as the responsibilities of finance teams change to include giving their organizations more actionable information about cash flow and other critical business roadmap needs.

“It’s a matter of keeping your eyes open and understanding what affects your company, and being able to plan and have these discussions on the needs of the company in order to create a plan across all departments that satisfies those needs and makes sure that everyone is aligned and informed,” Held said.

As the digital transformation in 2022 leads to data-driven growth in 2023, CFOs are using new tools that streamline workflows and automate support functions to get a better handle on cash flow management, cash flow forecasting, and working capital management.

When Held started working in the field, most things were done by hand. Since then, he said, the CFO office and the finance group have changed a lot in how they work, and a lot of that change has been caused by workflow automation and other operational modernizations.

“From the standpoint of being able to pull information from [one system] and get it into the accounting system, we shouldn’t have our accounting team manually entering and reconciling that information. Automating the movement of data and information from one system to another is key to making the company as efficient as possible across all areas,” Held said.

Held thinks that automation includes many different things. He believes that the benefits of automated accounting solutions will change as the needs of the CFO office and finance teams grow.

“How do we get information that’s faster, cleaner, and more useful? As companies have evolved, data is king,” Held said, “and every decision is made based on what the data output from the finance department is, or systems that finance has connections with, whether it’s a Salesforce CRM system or something that’s tracking the ARR that’s there when our contracts are renewing.”

Financial Insulation

Some businesses are more likely to survive a recession than others. Held considers himself lucky that Hazeltree, an established software system that its clients depend on, is relatively safe in the face of rising interest rates, inflation in the past, and other macro factors.

Still, he says that other businesses that aren’t as well protected against economic downturns should make sure that their workflows are integrated in a way that takes advantage of affinities and gives the CFO and their finance team the operational transparency and insight they need to make the right business decisions when times are tough.

“It’s working with the whole business to make the company better, creating efficiencies, and bringing in the appropriate knowledge and actionable information,” Held said.

He also says that every day is different, which is part of what makes a day in the life of a CFO so interesting.