What Makes a Great CFO?: The Journey of Transformation with CFO CJ Gustafson

This week on the Expert Voices podcast, Randy Wootton, CEO of Maxio, speaks with CJ Gustafson, CFO, and writer behind Mostly Metrics, to discuss the CFO's transformation from a back-office statistician to a front-office strategist, the evolving landscape of SaaS, and the future of finance leadership. Randy and CJ discuss the qualities that distinguish outstanding CFOs, the integration of strategic planning with finance, and the powerful impact of technology on the CFO's role. Listen as CJ shares how CFOs are leveraging technology to streamline processes, enhance decision-making, and drive company performance while balancing risk in the dynamic SaaS sector.

Quotes

• “I think there's a lot of idea generation that's made easier and then being able to link together different areas of work. So there are a lot of cool tools that are coming about that will take, basically information from the front of the house, from customer support, or maybe like a BDR, getting information to then link and say, does this person have an account with us? What's their historical spend? Have we ever talked to them before? It's linking data from different parts of the organization in a way that you can tell a story and then go back and have a conversation with the customer, which I think before would have taken a lot more time.” -CJ Gustafson [40:38]

• “Being deeply integrated with the CEO and the CRO in terms of monetization strategy, I've talked about that as moving from the back office to the front office. What pricing should we be using, and packaging should we be trying, for which segments, for which products, in which regions? How does it impact our win rates, and how does it impact our churn? That, owning pricing and being able to provide options and being willing to experiment.” -Randy Wootton [08:33]

Expert Takeaways 

• Good CFOs are distinguished by their role as chief resource allocator, chief truth-teller, and chief risk officer, balancing strategic investments and maintaining honesty in communication.
• Modern CFOs must effectively integrate operational and financial data analytics for strategic insight, which demands both a high-level "eagle" perspective and a detail-oriented "mouse" focus.
• The evolving fintech stack and advancements in AI are enabling finance teams to elevate performance, with tools like Maxio automating revenue reporting and aiding in strategic planning.
• As technology proliferates within finance functions, a key challenge for CFOs is to ensure that tools are adopted and add value, rather than merely becoming shelfware.
• AI in finance is less about creating standout performers and more about raising the baseline performance of a team, but vigilance is necessary to avoid data "hallucinations" and inaccuracies.

Timestamps

(01:26) Qualities that separate good CFOs from great CFOs 

(06:18) Evolution of the CFO role and moving from back office to front office 

(13:13) Empowering the management chain and setting up monitoring systems. 

(22:15) Tailoring metrics for different audiences 

(26:35) The importance of planning in preparation 

(30:37) One database or data lake for production, operational, and financial data. 

(35:10) Improving both people and technology. 

(42:27) Creating guardrails and running AI models multiple times for accuracy. 

(44:39) The evolving role of the CFO and embracing augmented intelligence

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