Finance as the architect and builder of shareholder value

For the past 20 years, I have worked with chief financial officers and finance professionals on finance and business transformation programs. From my own time as a finance director, my passion has always been the evolving role of finance, which I find particularly relevant in this digital age. 

And that’s whether I’ll be defined by the traditional role of finance, as the financial controller or guardian or finance director – or whether I should exploit some of the core skills and actually take possession of the organization to redefine and shape an evolving role. 

I would suggest this role would be as the architect to build shareholder value. I work with finance functions to lift their capabilities to take the reins for the Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) processes in planning, budgeting forecasting performance reporting and analytics.  

In this way I can redefine, reconfigure, and reshape the finance function to be faster, more agile, and more focused to help align the organization around creating long-term shareholder value, whilst also meeting short-term targets.   

This is particularly relevant at the moment – and perhaps more than ever – because the technologies that support these EPM processes have matured to provide rich, easy to use powerful processing functionality.  

But it’s not just about technology and data but the more difficult challenges –  and therefore the opportunities –  around changes in corporate culture. 

This means the adoption of good practices, good governance and creating that focus on value.  If it’s not seen through this lens – or creating more value across the organisation – then technology is simply an enabler to speed up and automate current practices and processes.