GrowCFO Show

Susana Serrano-Davey is an experienced finance leader, mentor and coach. She even ran her own business for a while. Susana is joining the mentoring team we have here at GrowCFO. On this podcast I catch up with Susana to find out more about her. I also asked her “What makes a good finance leader?” About Susana Serrano-Davey Susana is a Spanish national, and currently lives in Marbella on the Costa Del Sol. She is a Chartered Accountant and a PwC alumni. Her experience includes roles in financial control at Tui Travel and CFO at Cash Converters Espana. You can find out more on LinkedIn. What makes a good finance leader? Susana has been, and still is, a CFO. She has worked with many senior finance people. She mentors both business leaders and finance leaders. Who better to ask “What makes a good finance leader?” Naturally, Susana gave me some good answers. Her initial take was around what makes you the CFO special: Pursue your own authenticity and build on what you have. Don’t be afraid to bring skills that aren’t on the traditional list of finance leader skills Understand who you are in addition to all the training you have. This will help you to shine A good finance leader knows his strengths and plays to these. You will know things you are weak at, and you need to recognise these. Theres nothing wrong with delegating or outsourcing things you don’t like doing or aren’t strong at. Even core finance skills. The GrowCFO competency framework identifies 45 areas. You can’t be equally strong in all 45, that’s just about impossible. If you are weak at something you might develop yourself and become mediocre. On the other hand, if you are strong at something and like doing it you can develop yourself to mastery. Which is the better use of your own limited personal development time? What makes a good team leader? Can a finance leader be good without being a good team leader? Susana thinks not. You need to invest time in your team. What makes a good finance leader be a good team leader? Susana gave us some pointers: understand their strengths and weaknesses Difficult to do when the typical CFO has back to back meetings and a never ending to do list. Don’t believe you have all the answers. Listen to your team, they often know what’s going on better than you do. Have a vision, but be prepared to modify this. Take your team on a journey, as long as you are moving forward you don’t need to worry too much about the ultimate destination. Be aware of your personal style, and be aware of the culture of your team or organisation. You can’t change your personality but you can tone certain things down where necessary. What makes a good finance leader a good co-pilot for the CEO? To be a great CFO you need a first class relationship with your CEO. You need to be a true business partner with the CEO. This means going well beyond just looking after the financial numbers. It means going further than just giving a finance perspective on things. A great CFO will understand the business, and will bring commercial insight along with his finance skills. You will need to compliment the skills the CFO has, so that your joint skills are rounded. We discussed how you build this commercial acumen. Susana has some great insights, and to find out more then listen to the audio recording of the full show. Find out more about GrowCFO If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars.  Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes.  You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

Abu Ali is a partner in a Newcastle based corporate finance boutique, WilliamsAli. He provides strategic M&A and funding advice to business owners and investors. Abu joins Kevin Appleby on the GrowCFO Show to explain the role of a corporate finance advisor, and the value that working with an external specialist can bring to your business. About Abu Ali Abu Ali qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Teeside based Clive Owen & Co. He soon left the world of audit to pursue a career in corporate finance. He gained his initial experience with Ryecroft Glenton Corporate Finance before moving on to become a director at Baldwins. Running is own practice was always Abu’s ambition, and in early 2019 he became one of the founders of Leathers Corporate Finance. In April 2020 Abu and his partner Phil Williams exercised an option to complete the buy-out of Leathers Corporate Finance. This included a full rebrand to Williams Ali and relocation to new offices within Newcastle.  WilliamsAli offers a focused, high quality service to help businesses and their shareholders realise their ambitions.  The team has extensive deal experience acquired over many years. They take a leading role in transactions. These include business sales, MBOs, acquisitions, private equity transactions and fundraising. What is Corporate Finance? Corporate finance includes a wide range of activities. Abu talked through the variety of activities he supports. He advises a variety of different people. These include: Shareholders on the sale of their business. Management teams on Management Buy-Outs. Acquirers on the identification and purchase of acquisition targets. Business owners on company valuations. Abu tells us that it’s not just about giving advice. There are many more practical activities he gets involved in. These include: Helping business owners prepare their business for an exit. Helping entrepreneurs prepare business plans to attract the funding needed to start up or develop their existing business. This might be in the form of equity, debt or grant funding. Assisting companies in defining and documenting their corporate and growth strategy. Who is corporate finance for? Raising funds for clients is a major part of Abu’s role. But Abu doesn’t just work with businesses that need to find funding. Some of his clients are very well funded. Clients may be looking to make acquisitions, and have funds available. Identifying the right acquisition becomes the challenge. Abu spends about half his time helping businesses to sell. People typically don’t know what their business is worth . They also don’t understand the process of selling and need help. Working with these clients Abu becomes an extension of the management team. He often takes a project management role from start to finish of the transaction. How do you find a buyer for your business? You can’t put a “for sale” sign up outside your business. Selling can often be a covert process to maintain confidentiality. Abu often finds that its necessary to make sure staff, customers and suppliers don’t know a business is for sale until the right time in the process. Often the right time might be when the deal has been done. Research is very important. Abu will spend a lot of time identifying potential buyers and developing a short list. To do this Abu needs to be well networked, and able to talk to his network about any opportunity he has with discretion. The network that Abu has built is different from one you would typically build as a CFO. This is one reason why a business with a very strong CFO might still engage a corporate finance advisor. Find out more about GrowCFO If you enjoyed this podcast you can subscribe to the GrowCFO Show with your favourite podcast app. The show is listed in the Apple podcast directory, Google podcasts and many others. GrowCFO is a great place to extend your professional network. You can join GrowCFO as a free member today and take part in our regular networking events and webinars. Premium members also have access to our extensive training centre. Here you can enrol in our flagship Future CFO or Finance Leader programmes. You can find out more and join today at growcfo.net

We’re back after a short break with season 2 of The GrowCFO Show. Ajmal Mian and Kevin Appleby discuss the future of the high street and the impact this will have on the CFO in the first podcast of the new season. About Ajmal Mian Ajmal Mian is currently Director of Finance at SURREY SKYLINE LTD. Until recently he was CFO of Blacksheep. Blacksheep is an independent and award-winning design agency, specialising in interior design, strategy, branding and graphics. Ajmal had overall responsibility for finance and operational aspects of the company including, HR, Legal, and IT. Whats happening on the High Street? During the last 12 months we’ve all become accustomed to shopping online. There are still things many of us would rather do in a physical shop, such as try on shoes and clothes before we buy. There’s still a big role for the high street as the world opens up again, but it will look quite different. There’s likely to be a whole load of excess property that needs to find an alternate use. Who are the winners and losers? There’s an attitude difference between older and younger shoppers. Millenials generally have a different mindset when it comes to buying on line. They are much happier to buy and return goods than try it on before you buy. Ajmal believes that it is this difference in buying preference that will trigger changes. The shop with no online presence will have very little future, while the businesses that can successfully combine online with bricks and mortar will win. Cashflow squeezed by the pandemic will mean businesses carry less physical stock. Highly specialised businesses that need to carry a big range of items will become less and less viable as local bricks and mortar businesses. Stores that can carry a small sample and have a bigger selection online will be the winners. “you want that suit in black sir?” “Thats fine, we can have it delivered to you tomorrow. Try the blue one we have on display for size” The high street as a future workplace What happens to the spare capacity on the high street? Ajmal believes there’s a future for semi remote working. Expect to see the increase in co-working spaces on the high street. We’ve all worked in Costa or Starbucks. Expect that model to flip, you pay them for a guaranteed workspace and you get your coffee for free. You might rent an office in the workspace, either for a full week or part of your week. This means you don’t commute all the time to your business premises. Instead you just go as far as your local high street. The new high street and the CFO You, as a visionary CFO should be thinking about the impact of this already. Are you set up to have your team working remotely for at least some of their working week? We believe that model is the future. It will be less about working from home and more about working from a properly equipped and connected local workspace. Are you ready for the impact on the supply chain? How will long term changes toward selling online or supplying customers direct from big warehouses impact your business. Theres nothing new about just in time supply, but its likely to go to a whole new level. The challenges of virtual working Virtual working doesn’t work for everybody. Kevin Appleby asked Ajmal about the challenges of managing and developing staff that aren’t at the next desk. Technology will have a huge role to play in this, and online learning is one of the big growth areas of the next few years. We talk about the future of the finance function every week in GrowCFO There’s a free zoom session nearly every Tuesday lunchtime where we talk about the latest developments in systems, people and processes. All you need to do to attend is join the free GrowCFO community today.

Paul McKoen is a very experienced CFO. His career has given him experience in a number of industries and includes just about every aspect of the CFO role. We talk through Paul’s career, and highlight a some interesting experiences of the CFO needing to make an impact very quickly in a new CFO role. Paul talks about the times where a fresh pair of eyes and some cross-industry experience made a real difference to his new employer. It’s quite a journey! Paul McKoen qualified at the Ford Motor Company Paul started his career at Ford where he gained his CIMA qualification and spent 11 years in finance, including an overseas role in Cologne. During this period, Paul worked his way up to middle-management grade. Paul experienced first-hand the huge impact of the introduction of technology solutions and the evolving effect that this can have on the finance role. The vast majority of Paul’s experience has been on-the-job training. For example, learning from bosses, peers and other role models. Paul has experienced many new CFO roles During his career, Paul has experienced many new CFO roles and Finance Director roles. These include divisional roles at Serco, Vertex/United Utilities and Balfour Beatty. Paul has also performed group CFO roles at Tradaq, B&M Retail, Value Retailer and Silentnight Group. Within these roles, Paul achieved many milestones such as delivering fundraising, acquisitions and successful company exits. Adding value within a new CFO role During one of Paul’s new CFO roles, he supported the CEO to determine why they were losing too many bids to competitors. This involving challenging the business and providing a new set of eyes regarding what was actually happening. For example, Paul carefully reviewed the assumptions being applied towards costing analysis and pricing. Accordingly, Paul identified a flaw in their assumptions that significantly reduced their pricing going forward. In summary, don’t be afraid to ask the obvious questions and to challenge the answers provided. Making an impact in a new CFO role Paul previously took on an interim CFO to support a fundraising process. The investors had challenged management due to concerns that their profit forecast was overstated by £3 million. Paul compared the sales forecast figures to the actual figures during the previous few years. Accordingly, he identified that the sales team were over-forecasting sales numbers by £10m. Applying a 30% margin resulted in a profit overstatement of £3m. This is a good example of how you can gain strong experience very quickly within a new interim CFO role. How to approach a new CFO role During your first 100 days, CFOs will have an up-front honeymoon period. This provides you with a fantastic one-off opportunity to spend lots of time with people and to ask the stupid questions. You are likely to identify some quick easy wins during these discussions to make an early positive impact within your new CFO role. GrowCFO‘s Future CFO Programme covers how to approach a new CFO role within Module 9 called Your first 100 days. Paul has a strong example of this from one of his previous new CFO roles. He spent the first few weeks asking everybody what does and doesn’t work. His findings identified various outdated strategies that were now causing a negative impact within the business. These insights allowed the business to adjust their approach and double sales during the next few years. This is a great example that shows the benefits of providing a fresh challenge within a business. Helping the next generation In summary, Paul has had an incredible range of experience during his career. He is keen to share these with the next generation of finance leaders to pass on the key learnings from his many successes. In addition, Paul has learnt how to solve problems effectively and has developed techniques to help him to relate to other people. He has also learnt how to bounce back from various setbacks. For example, Paul is familiar with the pain of redundancy and how to overcome this. Paul looks forward to getting more involved within GrowCFO and to positively contribute towards the community.

GrowCFO has created a CFO Competency Framework that covers the key skills required to become an effective finance leader.  This is rapidly becoming the global toolkit to help finance leaders benchmark their skills and competencies against their peer group.  It also acts as a CFO Readiness Toolkit to help the next generation of aspiring CFOs. During this podcast episode, Dan Wells and Kevin Appleby discuss the purpose of the CFO Competency Framework.  In addition, we discuss how it is helping so many finance leaders to accelerate their learning and development. CFO Competency Framework’s purpose GrowCFO noticed that there was a huge gap in the finance leader ecosystem.  Nobody had previously produced a global competency framework to help finance leaders benchmark their existing skills against those required to become a CFO. Senior finance professionals were struggling to identify their skills gaps and to prioritise their most important learning and development objectives.  As many people say, “You don’t know what you don’t know!” Our CFO Competency Framework is designed to deliver many important purposes. Identify the skills gaps to be addressed by the next generation of finance leaders. Assist CFO job applicants to become self-aware candidates with a proper development plan. Help first-time CFOs to become more impactful within your role. Highlight opportunities for the CFO to create value and achieve your company’s vision. Determine the difference between the CFO role and versus Finance Director or Head of Finance. Filter GrowCFO’s activities to help experienced CFOs to fulfil your annual CPD requirements. Map your competency assessment ratings into online courses, lessons and workshops. Benchmark your competency levels against your most relevant finance leader peer group. It is no surprise that many finance leaders are already using the GrowCFO Competency Framework to accelerate your career progression. How did we build the CFO Competency Framework? GrowCFO has a huge network of aspiring finance leaders, first-time CFOs, experienced CFOs, CEOs, Chairs, NEDs, other C-Suite members, advisors, investors and recruiters.  We held focus groups with representatives from these communities to determine the required competencies for the modern-day CFO. GrowCFO also consulted with a huge number of GrowCFO members to obtain people’s views and feedback.  We worked with technology experts, graphic designers and programme developers to build a market-leading digital CFO Competency Framework that operates on a self-serve basis. Following this, we engaged inspirational CFOs to create a huge number of competency lessons that are located within our world-class learning management system.  We have mapped each of our CFO competencies into online training courses and regular workshops.  This allows finance leaders to efficiently generate your tailored learning and development plan to further develop their skills and address their biggest challenges. https://youtu.be/6Kk9Yz2ax5s How is the CFO Competency Framework structured? Our CFO Competency Framework contains three categories: Foundation, Implementation and Impact.  These help you to preserve value, create value and maximise value throughout your role. Each category comprises three competencies, giving a total of nine competencies across the framework.  These competencies are inter-connected and you will often be using many of these concurrently. Each competency contains five different skills.  Therefore, the GrowCFO Competency Framework contains a total of 45 skills that are relevant to a typical modern-day CFO. There is a lot for finance leaders to master and our framework will constantly evolve over time, in line with the ongoing evolution of the CFO role. Foundation category The Foundation category contains three competencies: Governance and Control, Operational driver and Financial Planning & Analysis. These three competencies form the foundation for your future success within the role and are critical towards preserving value within your business. Implementation category The Implementation category contains three competencies being: Strategic Business Partner, Catalyst for Change, and Fundraising and M&A. These competencies represent your ability to deliver the company’s business plan and to create value in your role.  You are likely to be combining your hard and soft skills with a powerful effect. Impact category The Impact category contains the following three competencies: Leadership, Commercial mindset and Soft skills. These contain many of the advanced competencies that really make you stand out as a top-quality finance leader.  These are harder to learn but allow you to maximise the value that you create across your firm. The nine competencies The following section provides more insights regarding each competency: Governance and Control Governance: Deliver your Board responsibilities and produce Board pack reports. Ensure director compliance and conduct. Risk management: Implement policies and procedures. Monitor control frameworks and oversee committees; Compliance: Perform financial and non-financial reporting. Comply with regulatory requirements such as legal, tax, statutory audit and internal audit/reviews; Closing the books: Optimise your period-end close procedures. For example: process journals, form valuations and make judgements; and Treasury: Oversee cash management and treasury policies. Manage foreign exchange and implement hedging arrangements. Operational driver Lead operations: Oversee specific operational activities. For example, Finance, HR, Legal, IT and Facilities; Implement and integrate systems: Identify systems, implement new technology solutions and integrate applications; Optimise processes: Review business processes to determine how best to simplify, automate and streamline their associated activities; Embed finance across the business: Develop relationships across each department and put finance at the heart of the business; and Capture data and create dashboards: Understand what your audience wants. Extract data and report it in the most user-friendly manner. Financial Planning and Analysis Allocate capital: Divide up your company’s financial resources and other sources of capital in a manner that generates the maximum return for your shareholders; Build financial models: Create a short-to-medium term model to forecast your financial performance and KPIs based upon your strategic plan; Create investment cases: Challenge and support investment cases to determine which initiatives to support; Analyse data: Apply your financial perspective and commercial awareness to scrutinise both financial and non-financial data; Manage outcomes: Manage outcomes of budgetary performance during each financial period. Take mitigating action where required. Strategic Business Partner Influence strategies: Deliver data-driven insights, generate new ideas and influence the business plan; Support decision-making: Support your teams and facilitate problem-solving. Provide a financial perspective, create collaboration and drive decision-making; Become a critical voice: Challenge the management team and Board. Also, become an influential voice across the wider firm; Manage stakeholders: Be the main point of contact to internal and external stakeholders. Provide regular updates and generate confidence in your business; and Be the co-pilot to your CEO: Work closely with your CEO to communicate and deliver the business plan across your organisation. Catalyst for Change Identify profit and cash initiatives: Combine your financial knowledge, commercial awareness and business relationships to identify opportunities that improve financial performance; Oversee and drive business change: Lead and oversee change initiatives that deliver the key objectives within your business plan; Finance transformation: Design and implement a medium-term collection of finance projects that deliver a pillar of your company’s key strategic objectives; Restructure business operations: Deliver significant business change such as merging operations and carving out business units. In addition, consider restructuring teams, integrating new businesses and outsourcing processes; and Monitor effectiveness of change: Regularly monitor the impact of change initiatives against your intended targets and implement any mitigating action to deliver the planned outcomes. Fundraising and M&A Identify and evaluate opportunities: Work with your management team to develop your fundraising and M&A strategy. Also, understand the components of value creation, identify opportunities and create investment cases. Accordingly, determine returns on investment and de-risk your activities; Perform valuations: Build valuation models using a range of approaches. Determine valuation ranges and returns on investments. Assess the transaction’s impact on your financial model and its value for money; Fundraising: Lead fundraising rounds and negotiate terms. Co-ordinate advisors, manage stakeholders and complete deals; Making acquisitions: Perform a key role in acquiring companies and assets. Lead the deal process, work with advisors and integrate acquisitions; and Exit readiness: Implement the necessary actions to prepare your business for an exit and play a key role in the sales process. Leadership Lead your finance function: Determine your purpose, structure your finance activities, shape the team and deliver your responsibilities; Become a C-Suite business leader: Enable the vision and set the right pace. Share the bigger picture, monitor activities, collaborate, keep people informed and help people to succeed; Manage people: Determine your people plan throughout the business life cycle. Accordingly, recruit, manage and motivate your workforce. Align your teams and create self-leaders; Drive the culture: Promote your desired business culture, act as a role model and exhibit the right values. Champion diversity and inclusion throughout your business; and Represent your business externally: Build trusted relationships and generate confidence with external stakeholders. For example, shareholders, investors, customers, suppliers, regulators and market analysts.  In addition, get involved in public relations activities and support third party negotiations. Commercial mindset Understand your business: Learn all about how the business works and its previous journey. Understand why things are done in a certain way. Determine how decisions are made and identify any internal politics. Be aware of your customer offerings and what is currently happening; Develop market knowledge: Build up your knowledge of rival products, your competitors’ activities and market trends. Understand the impact of emerging business models, new entrants and market disruptors; Tell the financial story: Utilise your commercial awareness to tell the financial story. For instance, link data trends to commercial activities and demonstrate what is driving the financials; Drive growth: Help to identify new sources of growth such as new products, expansion into other markets and M&A; and Maximise shareholder value: Think like an investor to balance short-term earnings versus long-term growth. Identify profit and cost drivers and review the customer value proposition. Manage the profit and loss account and perform value chain analysis.  Respond to market threats, terminate non-profitable activities and dispose of non-core assets. Soft skills Communication: Communicate effectively in a calm and controlled manner that spreads confidence amongst your audience.  Deliver storytelling in an engaging manner. Tailor this to your audience to make it interesting, relevant and digestible.  In addition, influence your listeners and demonstrate active listening during conversations.  Develop strong presentation and writing skills; Relationship-building: Build a strong network and develop relationships with senior colleagues, individual teams and external stakeholders.  Understand individual behavioural traits and build up your awareness of different personality types.  Develop strong emotional intelligence and self-awareness to thrive during difficult conversations and challenging situations. Obtain people’s buy-in during project management and change management initiatives; Gravitas: Demonstrate charisma and self-confidence through your tone and style of interactions with other people.  Encourage, influence and reassure others; Trustworthiness: Generate trust and confidence in everything that you do. Deliver quality, meet expectations and keep your promises. Communicate with a combination of authority, presence and impact; and Personal effectiveness: Work proactively with a clear vision and determination.  Multi-task under pressure across a wide range of tasks, whilst generating ideas and solving problems effectively. Possess a range of characteristics including being driven, resilient, agile. Also, be adaptable, creative and bold when required.  Become a self-learner who takes the initiative and exercises strong judgement when required. There are detailed guidance notes covering each of these competency areas within your CFO Competency Framework. Completing the CFO Competency Framework Your CFO Competency Framework is incredibly easy to complete and takes around ten minutes.  It is a digital toolkit which has received extremely positive feedback from your finance leader community. The framework contains an overview of the GrowCFO competencies and has dropdown menus for each skills topic.  You will be asked to rank yourself by selecting your current level against each of the 45 skills topics. Your GrowCFO management team have produced guidance notes to help determine your current rankings.  For each skills topic, you should select either no experience, basic level, intermediate level, advanced level or not relevant to your career. You then submit your results and start getting excited about reviewing your summary report. CFO Competency Framework summary report Upon completing the survey, you will receive an email containing a summary of your results.  This summary report helps you to easily identify your skills gaps to include in your career development plan. The report clearly maps your personal development action plan into GrowCFO’s activities. This helps you to prioritise completing your most relevant online lessons, courses and workshops. Your CFO Competency Framework summary report also benchmarks your ratings against GrowCFO’s finance leader community. Benchmarking Many members of the finance leader community are completing your CFO Competency Framework and we are already receiving responses on a daily basis.  This provides us with a huge amount of anonymous data that we can use to benchmark you against your most relevant peer group. Within the survey, you will be asked to specify the nature of your current role and your level of seniority.  You will also provide your company’s ownership category, size bracket and industry sector. This information allows us to tailor your benchmarking report according to each of the above.  Therefore, you can feel confident that you are being benchmarked against your most relevant peer group.  This is all done on an anonymous basis to protect your data privacy. CFO Competency Framework link Aspiring and existing finance leaders should log into growcfo.net and then click on Training Programmes to access your CFO Competency Framework.  Please message Dan Wells or Kevin Appleby if you have any questions.

Tanbir Jasimuddin shares his experience with digital finance. Tanbir and his team at family law firm Vardags have recently won an award. Transformer of the year at the Generation CFO Digital Finance Function Awards. He is also an author of white papers for the FP&A trends group. About Tanbir Jasimuddin Tanbir graduated with a chemistry degree and qualified as an accountant, then moved into management consulting (Capgemini, KPMG and then McKinsey). He’s now back on the coal face. Tanbir is currently the Director of Finance of a small family law firm called Vardags. How is the family law business at the moment? Business has been tough as we navigate Covid. For some reason, there’s a reluctance among the general population to initiate divorce proceedings whilst locked down. However, we are optimistic that there will be a strong bounce back. The firm has big growth plans, and 2020 will simply be a small blip on the chart. The Vardags digital finance team Tanbir leads a small finance team at Vardags. It’s quite a young and relatively inexperienced team but the people are very bright. They are mostly high calibre graduates and several are studying for CIMA qualifications. They were winners of the Generation CFO digital finance function awards last month Tanbir has transformed finance at Vardags. His challenge is to take away the routine and repetitive tasks from his team and free them up to do more value-adding and challenging work. They are an ambitious bunch and Tanbir needs to give them all career paths that can keep them engaged and grow their skills. https://youtu.be/QIJjOsKZ8Ow Developing digital finance The transformation brought together activity analysis, process improvement and automation. Power BI has been implemented and is one of the biggest tools for providing insight into the business. Some facts according to McKinsey: over half of finance processes can be automated analytics is vital, and analytics leaders outperform their peers- These areas are often known as digital finance. Tanbir isn’t keen on this term. “We’ve been doing this for a long time. What’s changing is the tech toolkit available to us”. Should finance be the custodians of data? Maybe that was a good idea in the past, but there’s now so much data that one team cant own it all. Data governance is important though. We must make sure there’s a single source of the truth. Does Excel have a place in digital finance? Tanbir is on the anti-Excel side of the discussion. Excel is flexible and everyone knows how to use it. But it’s a barrier to scaling your data (no controls, no workflow, no audit trail, limited functionality). There was a time when finance was the analytics expert in the organisation. We are still stuck in our spreadsheets, whereas our marketing colleagues have embraced big data Tanbir’s work outside Vardags Tanbir is building his personal brand within the industry. There are plenty of networking groups out there. He admits to suffering from webinar and Zoom fatigue at the moment! Tanbir is involved in the FP&A trends group. He’s currently working on a white paper for them on data visualisation. Tanbir has also presented for them on topics such as integrated planning and zero-based budgeting

Baz Bedrossian, an experienced CFO known for his expertise in business turnarounds, shares invaluable insights on navigating challenging times for companies. He emphasizes the importance of understanding team dynamics and maintaining open communication with stakeholders. Baz explains essential strategies for effective turnarounds, such as refining business models and cash flow management. He also discusses the role of agility in decision-making and highlights the human element critical to finance leadership.

GrowCFO are launching our 2021 finance systems survey to share technology insights from your community. This will help finance leaders to embed technology solutions into your business operations. In addition, this will help you to act as a catalyst for change across your wider firm. Technology offers more opportunities to streamline business processes and to evolve finance functions. This is driving the automation of most routine manual activities. During this podcast episode, I asked Chris Tredwell for his insights given his lead role within GrowCFO’s Future of Finance Function events. Finance Systems Survey overview Each year, GrowCFO run a high profile finance systems survey to help finance leaders. Its purpose is to collate knowledge and insights regarding how you use finance systems and other software. Therefore, the survey should help you to maximise the effectiveness of your finance function. Prior to launching this survey, we dedicate significant time towards obtaining membership feedback regarding which topics to feature in the survey. This includes organising focus groups, hosting individual discussions and collating direct feedback. What the 2021 survey covers Based upon the feedback received, this year’s survey will collate feedback from your finance leader community to answer the following questions: Which finance systems are the most popular in the marketplace? Which finance systems are the most appropriate for certain types of companies based upon their size and complexity? What percentage of companies are using cloud-native products? How do finance leaders prefer to purchase and implement their finance systems? How long do companies spend on implementing their finance systems? Do you need third party support to implement each finance system? What is the cost of implementing each finance system? How sophisticated is each finance system? How good is each system at dealing with foreign exchange and generating consolidated financial information? Which other systems have you implemented into your finance system? How did you integrate third party software? Which future innovations will you implement into your finance function? What are your biggest challenges towards replacing your finance system? Which technologies will best support you with remote working? How long does your financial close take? How long does it take to produce your monthly management report pack? Are you able to easily access and extract data from each finance system? Completing the finance systems survey The survey is located in the cloud and takes around five minutes to complete by clicking here. We will collate responses during the next 4-6 weeks until we have strong representation across each of the most popular finance systems. Reporting the results We will present the 2021 finance systems survey results during a special Future of Finance Functions event and will provide Q&A opportunities for all of our members. GrowCFO will aggregate the survey results into a detailed report, which details each of our key findings. This will focus upon the above topics and will be published within your GrowCFO website. We shall also share high level summaries on social media platforms such as LinkedIn and will produce a podcast to talk through the results in more detail. Please complete the survey Please take five minutes to complete the finance systems survey here so that GrowCFO can help you with these essential topics and also benefit the wider finance leader community. Thank you in advance for your support.

Research shows that soft skills contribute towards 80% of your career achievements.  Despite this, most people prioritise developing hard skills and do not have an action plan to improve your soft skills.  This is particularly true of the finance leader community, who spend much of their career learning technical accounting skills. The CFO role has evolved significantly during recent years.  You will need to master a significant number of soft skills to successfully deliver your role.  I asked experienced CFO Catherine Clark for her insights.  Catherine is GrowCFO’s lead professional mentor and has significant experience of performing the Board level CFO. Importance of soft skills Soft skills are highly important to becoming a finance leader.  They are the qualities that make your leadership successful. Soft skills are the human skills that you use in teamwork, leadership, collaboration, communication and dealing with people.  These are sometimes known as the emotionally intelligent skills and help you to tune in with other humans. To many people, certain soft skills come naturally.  Others will need to invest time in learning these. Most accountants will learn your hard skills through your qualifications.  People consider these to be a given as you become more senior.  You will then need to differentiate yourself through your soft skills. Finance leaders have an incredible amount of knowledge and provide a unique perspective to your management team.  Soft skills allow you to articulate knowledge in a way that creates significant impact.  Communication is a vital soft skill Most experts state that communication is the most important soft skill.  Many people feel overwhelmed in their roles and rely upon your communications to provide clarity.  Finance leaders play a huge role in sharing the bigger picture, the purpose and the performance of an organisation.  This enables people to understand their role in contributing towards the business. Your gravitas, presence and how you show up must provide comfort to people.  Your finance leader role is particularly important towards making people feel safe within their roles. The CFO plays a key role in providing business confidence to the Board and stakeholders.  Therefore, the CFO must always look calm and in control. Your body language contributes towards 55% of your message, your tone contributes 38% and your voice 7%.  Therefore, you need to be able to communicate through your body language as well as through your words. Most people across the organisation will not have access to the information that you possess.  You must therefore continuously communicate with everybody to help motivate people to achieve your company’s ambitions. Listening skills Your listening skills are also a vital part of communication.  These include asking people the right questions at the right time.  You need to actively listen to people to help them feel their worth in the organisation.  This often results in a huge impact on people’s performance. Active listening helps you to understand other people’s perspectives.  This also supports your decision-making and allows you to factor in a wider range of insights. You can assess your listening skills by trying to recollect what somebody has told you after a conversation. Why is storytelling so powerful? Storytelling is an essential form of communication as it helps to bring things to life.  People absorb information in different ways and may find it easier to relate to stories. Finance leaders need to adapt their communication to different audiences.  Most other people will not possess your level of technical ability or access to information.  Storytelling can help to bridge this gap. Showing vulnerability Vulnerability can be a great approach for building a connection with people.  This helps people get to know you better and portrays you as being more approachable.  People are prepared to show much more vulnerability within today’s culture compared to previous generations. Most people feel vulnerable in many ways and may find it easier to relate to others who experience similar emotions. How to improve your soft skills Finance leaders need to start by acknowledging the importance of soft skills. You should start by continuously self-assess your current levels of performance. For instance, think about how others may perceive you.  Then, consider the impact of your behaviour amongst your colleagues. Look around you for strong role models and weak performers.  Observe their behaviour traits and determine what may work for you.  However, do not attempt to become a clone of somebody else as you need to remain as yourself. Once you have determined your shortfalls, you need to create an action plan to improve your soft skills and dedicate significant time towards practising this. You will need to develop excellent soft skills to become the best finance leader that you can be. For more details, finance leaders should work through GrowCFO’s Soft skills competency module Mentoring will improve soft skills Soft skills are much harder to learn than hard skills, which you can often learn via textbooks. A professional mentor will work with you to determine your career aspirations, address your skills gaps and challenge you in the right areas.  In addition, they will become your biggest supporter and will help you to reach your highest level of potential.     Mentors work through specific scenarios with you to determine how you can develop each skill as you work through your career.  Your mentor will also challenge you and provide honest feedback, including delivering the harder messages.  You will move forward together to achieve your aspirations. In summary, soft skills are essential towards your career but can be difficult to develop. As a result, finance leaders need to dedicate significant time towards methods to improve your soft skills to achieve your full potential.

Mark Lee has been described as the most networked accountant in the UK. Who better to talk to about building your professional network?! Networking on LinkedIn is a key part of this. Particularly at the moment when meeting up in person is so difficult. Mark is a man of many talents. He runs his own business mentoring accountants and tax advisors. Mark is Chairman of the Tax Advice Network. He is also Treasurer to The Magic Circle and a former Chair of the Tax Faculty at the ICAEW. There are millions of qualified accountants and finance leaders around the world.  Each individual has their own unique combination of soft skills, hard skills and personal values.  This podcast episode will help finance leaders to stand out on LinkedIn and tailor your inbound content. The benefits of LinkedIn LinkedIn is the main social media platform for senior finance professionals.  LinkedIn offers an amazing free service for finance leaders to market themselves and build their network.  Many finance professionals do not enjoy networking events. They are constantly being pounced on by salespeople.  LinkedIn offers a good way around this. Very few finance leaders have received proper training on how to maximise the benefits of LinkedIn.  For example: How do you stand out amongst the crowd? What is the best way to tailor your inbound content? Which types of people should you connect with? Standing out amongst the crowd LinkedIn can be incredibly valuable for building your personal brand and obtaining new roles.  It is essential to optimise your professional profile well in advance of when you actually need it. Your history of LinkedIn posts, collaboration and endorsements takes a while to build up.  When somebody searches for you online, your LinkedIn profile will be the first thing that they see. It is important to use the right photo and strapline.  You should also update what you say about your previous roles so that your LinkedIn profile is relevant now.  Clearly state what problem you solve for people who are reading your profile. Most people fall into the trap of simply re-writing your LinkedIn profile every time you think about moving roles.  Whilst this does have some impact, you will miss the opportunity to demonstrate your full expertise.  This can be more powerfully portrayed by the quality of your network and what they say about you.  Adding endorsements, blog posts and articles will also further enhance your overall impact. If you achieve something great then tell people about it.  Find a style to powerfully portray your achievements, without sounding like your own biggest fan…! Video posts can also be a fantastic way of giving people a change to get to know you online.  They profile your personality and help show what you are like to interact with. For more details, finance leaders should work through Module 4: Build your own brand within your Future CFO Programme Home – GrowCFO Networking on LinkedIn Very few finance leaders have a proper strategy to build up a powerful LinkedIn network.  Networking on LinkedIn is about quality not quantity and you need a proper plan. Start by connecting with your known contacts and people who you have previously worked or interacted with.  After that, you should also be very picky about who you accept connection requests from. Also think carefully about who you request to connect with on LinkedIn.  Networking is important and you want to create a powerful network.  This network should demonstrate your profile, as well as provide you with insightful content.  There are huge benefits to networking on LinkedIn with people who regularly share value-adding posts, videos and articles.  Many people worry about constantly being sold to on LinkedIn.  However, it is easy to adjust your notifications to minimise spam messages.  If necessary, it takes seconds to remove any connection who keeps spamming you. For more details, finance leaders should work through Module 5: Grow your own network within your Future CFO Programme Home – GrowCFO Personalising your newsfeed The LinkedIn algorithm attempts to personalise your newsfeed based upon your interests.  You can easily educate the algorithm by liking and commenting on posts that you find helpful. Likewise, you can click on the three dots next to any post. Click accoringly to tell the algorithm which post categories you no longer wish to see.  LinkedIn will respond accordingly and will stop showing you these types of posts. Remember – you are far more likely to receive content in your newsfeed from your first connections.  Therefore, think about who these people should be. Following people and groups will also educate LinkedIn around your interests.  You can easily activate these and tailor them over time. A few final words of caution! Never share more on LinkedIn than you would be prepared to share with an audience of random people.  This is what you are doing every time you post something into social media…! Find out more about Mark Lee at his website, bookmarklee.co.uk