原来是a 首席财务官’s primary focus was on the traditional functions of the job: monitoring cash flow and financial activities; serving as a controller and accounting expert; limiting unnecessary spending; and ensuring that financial decisions conformed to standard operating procedures.

These duties are still critical, of course, but they’re increasingly becoming secondary to the 战略角色 首席财务官们被要求参与进来. As the pace of business accelerates 和技术 advances, the 现代首席财务官 must take a broader, more forward-thinking and growth-oriented approach to the job.

The consulting firm Accenture captured this 转换 in a 2022年的调查, 他们发现，典型的财务主管现在把大部分时间都花在了带领全公司变革和优化业务运营的努力上, with an emphasis on accelerating revenue and profit growth.

这是我在快速发展的中小型医疗保健公司中看到的一个新现实，我曾在这些公司担任过许多领导职务. These companies not only expect you to be a functional 首席财务官, delivering on basic 会计的职责, 他们还希望你成为一名有战略眼光的首席财务官, working with the leadership team to explore growth opportunities and maximize profitability.

那么，你如何培养这种战略专长呢? 通过反复试验, 我了解到，最有效的方法是专注于你现有的财务能力和责任——这些功能已经在你作为首席财务官的职权范围内——并提升它们，以提供公司所需的战略洞察力.

In this article, I share six areas where I recommend you focus. The 开发ment of the skills I discuss can be applied broadly to growth companies and employed across a wide spectrum—by 部分首席财务官 与后期创业公司合作 临时首席财务官 in 不良情况, or even by finance chiefs employed by public companies.

When it comes to expanding and bolstering your existing 功能, 我首先讨论最简单的部分. 后来的那些, 尤其是企业愿景, 可能会占用你更多的时间, but I expect you’ll find that mastering them is well worth it to you and your company. I include examples to show you how I put each of these concepts into action.

1. 报告及预测

报告和预测 财务总监的桌上赌注是什么. The proliferation of 软件 as a service (SaaS) and cloud services has made it easier and cheaper to integrate 强大的会计系统 跨组织. A functional 首席财务官 must ensure that everyone who needs access to these systems has been fully onboarded and is using them, 而战略领导者则会寻找机会深入研究信息，为组织提供可行的见解.

通过分享我向一家公司展示的经验，我可以最好地解释如何发展这一领域，即团队的全面培训是必不可少的一步——甚至对于领导力也是如此. I worked for an early-stage healthcare services company where the CEO tracked 企业财务 在一个 Excel工作表 he saved on his desktop and updated at night and on weekends. 这种做法产生了明显的问题. 首先，他的影子财务经常是不完整的. 第二个, 他的做法造成了一种脱节，使财务团队无法形成定期更新信息的习惯，也无法为首席执行官提供有用而及时的见解. Without this routine, the CEO was flying blind when it came to 销售和盈利能力 决策.

当我加入的时候, 我帮助公司规范了所有的会计工作, 操作, 财务报告模板, 和 会计科目表. 然后，公司和我就财务团队何时向首席执行官和董事会提交最新损益表的报告日程表达成了一致, 资产负债表, 现金流量表以及客户和产品级别的细分. That report also regularly provided information on the performance of individual departments, comparing the figures for each with that department’s budget, 预测, 以及前一年的数据.

We didn’t stop with standardizing companywide reporting, however. We leveraged the information to recommend 操作 changes that would improve areas of financial underperformance. 这不仅解放了CEO的夜间和周末时间, 但也让我们对公司的运营有了战略洞察力，同时减少了管理团队在之前分散的报告系统下的焦虑和压力.

2. 财务规划与分析

The next logical step for a strategic 首席财务官 is to look for ways to apply standardized databases and quantitative skills in 财务规划与分析. FP&A通常用于为公司面临的任何方面的财务和运营绩效问题生成数据驱动的答案. 有些是常规分析, such as comparing the current period’s performance to the prior one’s, 而其他的则是特别的分析，例如计算新的销售支持技术平台的投资回报. 战略型首席财务官使用与职能型首席财务官相同的流程，可能会处理一些与职能型首席财务官相同的问题，但会采取更积极主动的方法.

当我加入一家制药公司担任首席财务官时, I found that few of the company’s senior leaders knew which customer, 产品, 或者地理位置产生了最高的增长或收入. This became a problem when the company had to quickly increase profitability. 在实施了基本的报告改进之后, 我对公司的多个业务和客户群进行了全面的盈利能力分析，开始回答更广泛的战略问题.

采用FP&A 商业智能 像Microsoft Power BI这样的工具, we pinpointed the sources of the highest growth 和 greatest profits and losses. We then broke them down by 产品 category, 产品 SKU, customer, business unit, and geography. But we didn’t just produce a report that sat in colleagues’ inboxes. 我们召集了跨职能团队来帮助我们进行设计, 开发, 并从报告中收集见解, 并与各职能部门的执行领导就商业和运营变革进行深入对话，以最大限度地提高财务绩效.

Within a short time, the company had a holistic understanding of which segments contributed profits. 同样重要的是, we had complete alignment among senior leaders that we should focus on the most profitable segments. This strategy allowed us to nearly double the company’s profitability in less than a year.

3. 风险管理和缓解

如果金融领导人认为 风险管理 was just an administrative footnote to financial oversight, then the COVID-19 pandemic and 全球供应链崩溃 颠覆了这种误解. 今天, 首席财务官必须发挥作用，推动整个组织的团队进行风险评估，并定期解决减轻风险的问题. 同时, they need to see 风险管理 through the prism of opportunity, looking for where it creates potential commercial openings.

例如, 2017 - 2020年, 我负责一批公司，这些公司将医疗产品的关键部件进口到中国，或者在中国组装. 这些公司享有跨境, lower-cost arbitrage and consistently expanded gross margins for many years. However, when I joined, I could see 操作, regulatory, and 宏观经济风险在即. 我们与高层领导进行了发人深省的季度讨论，以预测可能出现的危险，以便我们能够投入资源并采取行动，减轻最紧迫的物质风险. The teams consistently highlighted the possible 操作 and 金融风险 of cross-border trade barriers disrupting critical component shipments.

This proved prescient when a trade war flared up between the US and China in 2018. Because we were prepared through our risk planning, my group of companies was able to minimize 供应链中断 by leveraging backup component sources in other parts of Asia and Europe. Integrating 风险管理 into the company culture let us not only reduce or neutralize risks, 但对利润的影响也有限, creating commercial opportunities for our sales and 市场营销 teams to increase market share. We continued reliably delivering 产品s and solutions while our competitors were still coping with disruptions.

4. 数字转换

It’s routine for a 首席财务官 to ask department heads to do more with less. 金融 chiefs can lead the way by doing so themselves, examining ways to 自动化后台操作 to free employees from repetitive tasks while saving time and money. 自动化 还可以帮助财务部门处理在紧迫的时间表内不断增加的工作周期:每月结束, 紧急分析请求, 和关键时期 兼并与收购. Being perpetually short of hands and hours inevitably leads to high levels of stress.

我亲身体会到这种转变是多么必要. 在一家全球制造公司重组后, my finance team was staffed with just two business analysts. 这个精干的团队负责在每个月的两个工作日内报告和分析25家投资组合公司的财务结果. It simply wasn’t feasible for two people to complete this spreadsheet-based copy-and-paste project within 48 hours. 自动化是唯一的解决方案.

我们投资了一小笔钱 机器人过程自动化 to handle routine reporting processes and restructured the team’s approach, helping the two analysts become experts in 商业智能 and visualization programming. Using these technologies, the two were able to complete the reporting tasks in one working day. 他们利用节省下来的时间进行分析，并与商业领袖合作，以可操作的见解补充报告.

抓住这些经验教训, our corporate 开发ment teams took a similar approach: They automated their monthly outreach, 使他们能够接触10倍数量的潜在收购目标，从而培养更大的合作伙伴管道.

5. 人才与文化

One valuable way a 首席财务官 can take a more strategic role is by becoming more directly involved in 招聘和培养人才. 而不仅仅是给人力资源部门提供人员需求方面的建议, a strategic 首席财务官 will partner with HR to create opportunities to bring high-performing financial talent into the organization.

例如, I once helped recruit a very talented executive to a small healthcare device manufacturing company that my firm owned, even though I knew we were going to sell it within the next year. We asked this person to join as the vice president of finance, 稳定公司, and successfully complete the sale—even though we didn’t have a specific role lined up for him afterward. This would have been a hard sell had we not approached this candidate with transparency, 诚实, 并承诺让他继续担任高级职位.

出售一年后, we delivered on the commitment and he became 首席财务官 of our largest portfolio business. 三年后, he was promoted to be the holding company finance chief, 监督所有投资组合公司.

作为首席财务官, 在培养高潜力的财务领导者方面发挥了积极的作用，这意味着我为公司的长期战略做出了贡献，帮助确保了一位能够在售后管理公司的员工. 而这一切都发生在财务部门, 不同职能部门的其他人也注意到了这一点，并采取了类似的方法来招聘和培养高潜力的销售人才, 市场营销, 操作, 和技术.

6. 战略规划

Companies value the hard data and empirical mindset that a finance chief lends to strategic planning. The 首席财务官 can use this as an opportunity to contribute to the 转换 公司的商业目标或能力, 例如, by championing acquisitions or introducing 合作伙伴hips to extend competitive advantages.

在与一家新兴市场心血管诊断公司合作时，我有机会将这一想法付诸行动，这家公司生产心脏监测器. The company had aggregated terabytes of heart rhythm data through the thousands of devices it had sold. This data was a unique asset, but the company didn’t use the information for any commercial purposes. 作为首席财务官, I considered any large source of unique data as a 潜在的机会 in a world where SaaS business models can be commercialized quickly.

I challenged the team to use that data as the basis of an analytics service while protecting patient confidentiality. 经过几个月的发展与当地 软件 合作伙伴, the team unveiled a new service to hospitals to provide real-time monitoring, 分析, and alerts if the 软件 detected abnormal rhythms in a patient. The service deepened customer relationships and added a highly profitable revenue stream.

With greater visibility and deeper insights about the company, the strategic 首席财务官 开发s a point of view about what 产品s, 功能, 和M&A opportunities can create transformative value for their company. Yet it’s important to keep in mind that what truly elevates your contribution to a growth company comes down to leadership.

企业达到目标的需求是巨大的, especially as macroeconomic pressures rise and venture capital, 私人股本, and public market expectations for financial performance continue to climb. Companies need leadership, and leaders must deliver growth. The strategic 首席财务官 is uniquely empowered in this respect. 当 现代首席财务官 rises above their functional responsibilities and provides valuable strategic insights, they can help their company transform and grow for the future.