White Papers

The CFO Perspective:
Transforming Finance into a Valued Business Partner

Nancy Neuringer, Principal, North Highland
John Rolfs, Principal, North Highland

Gone are the days when Finance was synonymous only with routine efforts inspiring fear, boredom, or both on the part of business leaders. Today, urgent changes in the business environment require CFOs to drive sustainable value creation in their organizations. Whether prompted by unstable economic conditions, high-stakes mergers and acquisitions, or intense global competition, the entire organization is continuously challenged to "do more with less" - and the CFO is now in prime position to champion the creation of business value from strategy to execution.

Leading CFOs are recognizing this opportunity to shift from internally-focused financial management to activities that produce meaningful insights for improving competitive value and providing direction to the organization. Forward-looking CFOs are retooling Finance to build a solid understanding of business value drivers and to develop a more integrated relationship with customers, operations, and suppliers.

In a recent study, North Highland asked a number of executives who moved from Finance to overall business leadership (CEO, President, COO) for insight on the critical steps they took to successfully transform Finance and their key learnings through the journey. They told us that effective transformation builds through the execution of three underlying practices.