Challenges faced by a business CFO

“Money without brains is always dangerous.” – Napoleon Hill

The above words said by the famous American author holds true with matters of finance. Similarly, if we could just tweak this statement it in terms of defining a CFO it would be: An organization without a good CFO would spelldisaster.

With constant evolving businesses, the CFOs have found themselves at a center-stage, on a myriad of issues. Withdestabilized money markets leaving economic and business uncertainty in its wake and cyber-attacks on large organizations, a need for risk management has arisen in order to protect vulnerable businesses.

With escalating costs of organizations, many businesses prefer to outsource a CFO to assist in the day to day functioning of the company. An outsource CFO too faces multiple challenges and calls in situation where the CFO should be defiant with decisions that are best in the interest of the company, and also at the same time be pragmatic as per changing business stances
Some of the roles and challenges faced by a CFO are elaborated below:

1. RISK MANAGEMENT :
Facing the uncertainty associated with domestic and international economic conditions and turning it into growth opportunity summarize the management of risks. To achieve this goal, a CFO needs to have a strategy in place (as opposed to cost reduction) and be should also be able to respond swiftly to tumultuous market environments, using the most updated tools and technologies. Some of the risks that a CFO has to negotiate are the economic conditions, regulatory changes, cyber threats, rapid speed of disruptive innovations, privacy management, resistance to change and sustaining customer loyalty.

2. MANAGEMENT OF COST AND PROFITABILITY MARGINS:
One of the roles of a CFOis the day to day management of costs and company profitability which is a challenge in itself. The real challenge lies in managing costs and profitability against the backdrop of economic change and specific industry pressures, along with expanding thegrowth of an organization.

3. EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT :
The finance functions showcase numerous changesas it has started to adopt new technologies hereby allow increasing levels of finance process automation. This has resulted in thetransformation of internal finance operations.
A CFOshould realize that managing evolving technology does not stress only on streamlining operations but is essential for managing regulation, compliance, and fraud detection.
A CFO who grasps technology quickly, the fasterdigitizationwill provide the data analytics needed for crucial decision making and will help to evaluate and discover incremental business opportunity.

4. CHANGING REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT :
When it comes to regulation the only one thing assured is change.
According to a survey, regulatory compliance still worries 45% of CFOs. Most of the CFOs and outsourced CFOs say this particular field is extremely harrowing as it becomes quite a tasks to keep up with the quick changing government regulatory.

5. RESOURCEMANAGEMENT AND RETENTION :
A CFO has to ensure that finding and retaining reliable resourcesthat are needed to drive finance teams,do form impetus to move a company forward. A CFO has to ensure that a consistent improving performance is laid out along with developing existing staff through knowledge sharing and cross-functional training, to making new strategic hires capable of helping fulfill the digital agendato ensure key roles are always covered.

All in all, a CFO needs to be a real multi-tasker. Their ability to embrace change, champion new technologies to support growth and efficiency, and act as trusted advisor to the board – whilst overseeing the day job of managing cost and profitability.If at any given point in time the need for a good CFO outsourcing service arises,ProBizAdvisor is the answer to your need. At ProBizAdvisor, we are professionals thatoffer specializedservices through outsourcing CFOs to a large clientele base.This is for a number of reasons, including contribution to Business Strategic leadership.

If you do feel the need to outsource a CFO, please feel free to contact the ProBizAdvisorMumbai CFO Services firm and we shall strive to assist you in each and everyway possible.