FIC
talking tech
Enter the chief value officer CFOs are strategic business partners to other C-suite executives, creating value for all stakeholders
T
BY THANDO PATO
he role of finance departments and CFOs has evolved. A successful CFO is no longer expected to just crunch numbers and report on financials – instead, panellists said they should be a strategic business partner to the CEO and the CIO, ensuring that all key business strategies have their input. The discussion arose during a Finance Indaba Conversation, ‘Finance-led strategies that deliver results’, which was sponsored by Workday. Edward Bass, account executive at Workday, kicked off the session by emphasising the evolving role of finance departments in organisations. “CFOs are in fact chief value officers, because businesses look to them to create value for stakeholders,” said Sandile Ntsele, CFO of Liquid Telecoms. “Finance departments are truth tellers,” he added. “In the past they were just focused on numbers but there has been a shift in thinking, and they now also need to present non-financial information that enhances business decisions. They also have the responsibility of ensuring that financial language is understood by key stakeholders.” Nerissa Chetty, head of financial control and reporting at UBank Limited, said finance
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departments have a much bigger role to play in the organisation’s value chain. “Finance needs to be a driver and be sufficiently knowledgeable to understand concepts related to the business at a high level, so we can question the business and influence how decisions are made,” she said.
Integration Sandile said that the tentacles of finance needed to extend to all areas of the business, especially IT. “Technology plays a role in providing valuable information to business operations and the finance community needs to play a role in its integration and consolidation. IT is an important key to forming strategies and analysing data. Business decisions are driven by the quality of information received from IT systems,” he added. “It’s important that upstream systems talk to downstreams to provide relevant insights. As CFOs we should be asking what is the purpose of the technology? Is it integrated? Is it providing us with insight or is it just a wasted investment?” Mark Stirton, group CFO, Mr Price Group, said the key to ensuring more strategic input from the CFO and their department was through technology. Technology like artificial intelligence (AI), he believes, will free up time that allows finance departments to be more strate-
