Written By: Chris Holloway | 11/25/2017
How To Win CFO Of The Year
Recently in Business Journal, an article was published about the CFO of Leadpages, Jason Heath. The site named him as CFO of the year.
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What It Took To Win
Taking control of disparate data to generate actionable insights for multiple departments
Hint: It Wasn't Accounting
I immediately noticed how neither one of these accomplishments was related to accounting. These were accomplishments that helped the business to grow.
The article further explains how Mr. Heath achieved these accomplishments by conducting a brief interview.
During the interview, Mr. Heath mentioned a couple of additional points that are worth highlighting to you.
#1 Process Efficiency Is Critical If You Would Like To Win CFO Of The Year
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“While managing the day-to-day finance function is important, the real reward comes from working alongside the team to improve the customer experience and grow the business.”
This quote from Mr. Heath makes it clear that even though the company does need him to maintain all of the accounting records, he is not entirely focused on that.
Presumably he has optimized his day to day responsibilities so effectively that overseeing them is not an all consuming task. He has time and energy to focus on business results.
#2 CFO HAS THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE THE CENTRAL INSIGHT PRODUCER
He Talks About The Value Of Working Outside Finance
In the interview, Mr. Heath describes his background. Before becoming CFO, he spent substantial time in non-financial functions. He describes how he was able to use this perspective to his advantage.
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“By leveraging my business intelligence background, I’ve created a team that has organized the vast amounts of data Leadpages collects.”
His Role As A Central Insight Producer
Mr. Heath is using his role to become a centralized insight producer for otherwise disconnected parts of the company.
This is a great example of how finance can serve as a critical business partner: creating cross organizational KPIs. Using its experience with producing business reports to create dashboards.
Rather than simply reporting on the outcomes, he’s honing in on the drivers of those outcomes and making those visible.
Congratulations To Mr. Heath
I enjoyed reading this article. It really cements the value of the focused services Ardent offers.
Our focus on process efficiency is there to help the free up the CFO and CFO’s staff to focus on other priorities. Our focus on performance management and business analysis is there to help the CFO and CFO’s staff outperform in its role as strategic business partner.
Getting these two focus areas right is what seemed to help Mr. Heath win CFO of the year. Our objective is always to make our clients proficient in these two areas.
You can find the original article here