It’s fall. However, this doesn’t mean you can drift off into a trance of pumpkin spices. There’s still work to get completed. To keep you on top of your to-do list, even if the flavor of the moment has been calling, we’ve put together how-to guides to work in marketing and the abilities accountants must acquire to be a CFO, as well as the measurement of the maturity of your FP&A.
Our typical disclaimer to those who are prudent: Always search for more resources and experts when working on financial work that is complex since it can be extremely difficult to summarize complex concepts.
Take an interest in these helpful financial spreadsheets CFO Brew found on LinkedIn this month.
Wassia Kamon’s “5 ways finance and marketing teams can work together better”: It could appear that the finance and marketing teams have nothing in the same. According to how Kamon is the vice president of corporate controller and finance for the Low Income Investment Fund, says as, sales and marketing “sell the sizzle not the steak,” while finance is “trained to…stick to the facts.”
In today’s multi-functional world, teams across the enterprise must be able to work together in innovative ways. Kamon provides five tips to connect the gap between finance and marketing. She recommends acknowledging the common pitfalls starting with the big picture, and then agreeing on common standards. She offers practical suggestions on how to achieve the goals of the headlines. For instance, she suggests that defining how expenses should be classified and identifying the relevant KPIs will help everyone agree on common principles.
Howard Katzenberg’s “10 skills accountants must build to become CFOs” The book is not the goal of every accountant to become CFO however, for those who have an interest in the top spot in finance, Katzenberg drills down into the necessary skills needed to succeed in the C-suite. Katzenberg is an ex-CFO and the founder of Glean.ai, a vendor spending management software company, sets out the ten essential skills accountants need to acquire on their way to becoming CFOs, which include analysis and cost management, as well as tech expertise, and customer relations and more.
Then, he explains how to determine which of these ten competencies are essential. For instance, when it comes to improving your tech skills, the author suggests “get[ting] comfortable using tools that help analyze business data easily to inform business strategies.”
Erik Lidman’s “The FP&A maturity model”: FP&A is becoming an essential strategic component of finance in these challenging times. As it gains importance, businesses must be aware of the maturity of their FP&A in order to improve it or run the risk of “hurt[ing] your business badly,” according to Lidman, CEO of Aimplan Animplan, an FP&A SaaS provider.
Lidman provides a comprehensive cheat sheet that finance professionals can use to determine the exact place where their FP&A is within the scale of maturity. He categorizes the stages of maturity into three including developing, intermediate and leading. He then breaks down various components of FP&A including functional skills, process as well as technology. For instance, under the category of process, companies with no formal FP&A procedure are considered to be developing, whereas organizations that have integrated processes which extend beyond finance are considered to be at the top of FP&A maturity.
