Zone & Co CFO Chad Wonderling was invited to speak at The CFO Leadership Council to discuss how financial executives can lead their company’s tech investments to create value and unlock marketplace potential. In his role at Zone, Chad has garnered unique insight into how businesses seeking to leverage technology and software should approach strategy and implementation to maximize its impact.
While it can be tempting to invest in solutions and then build processes around them, this can actually result in greater inefficiency, difficulties in implementation, and drain company resources in both the short and long term. By mapping out processes, needs, and requirements, CFOs can guide their company toward technology investments that deliver competitive returns and support growth and scalability for years to come.
Key takeaways
Profitability and efficiency
- Rationalize your costs and focus on sustainable decisions rather than incremental solutions.
- Cost of capital increases place more emphasis on working capital, cash conversion, lengthening DPOs and reducing DSOs.
- Look for strategic initiatives that drive efficiency within the financial side of the business through product innovation and product-led growth.
Identifying areas for investment
- Start with the process and allow your people to define it cross-functionally. Don’t just layer on tech.
- Look for risk. For instance, lead to cash is one of the highest-risk workflows within the business, and tech solutions can offer considerable value.
- Partner with the go-to-market function and be flexible and agile enough to drive efficiency, working capital and cash flows.
Understand your workflows
- Minimize risk. Drive efficiency by staying within as few systems as possible to optimize workflows.
- Discuss potential solutions. Talk to customers and partners in the business to learn from other people’s experience.
- Define your outcomes. What problem are you trying to solve? Map a path to success and identify the requirements for achieving it. Then you can begin vetting tech investments for your cross-functional partnership.
Common challenges
- Too many processes. Many businesses struggle to adapt to growth because their workflows are too complex and not sufficiently integrated.
- Siloed processes and unclear roles. Tech investments need to enhance cross-functionality and streamline multiple operations at once.
- Solve tomorrow’s challenges, not just today’s. Investments that don’t future-proof the business simply delay finance issues and speak directly to a CFO’s leadership.
- Make sure the right people are in the room. Start your conversations with small groups, and progressively map out how a tech investment will support each department. This will help align the team around “why and how” a solution will benefit all stakeholders.
Considerations for tech
- Do more with what you already have. Tech investments should allow you to grow and scale by making more of current resources.
- Always consider risk. Operational risk, data risk, financial risk, and dependencies on other systems can have a huge – and often unconsidered – impact on value.
- Plan for the whole business. Integrations maximize value when CFOs trace transactions and map out how every department interacts with them.
- Understand where you want numbers crunched. A crucial part of mapping out your processes is understanding on a granular level how data should flow.
- Keep in touch with vendors. Make sure you get clean data on results, and never shy away from reaching out to your vendor contacts to troubleshoot solutions.
Leading tech innovation as a CFO
By carefully examining the financial implications of tech investments from the perspective of process and value, CFOs can play a pivotal role in helping their company navigate complex business challenges. In fact, you’re in a unique position to quantify and evaluate tech investments that can impact the future success of everyone at your company.
“This is about the macro,” Chad explains, “and as leaders, people development and master planning is at the core of everything we do.”
Watch Chad’s interview at The CFO Leadership Council to learn more about how to guide your company from the CFO chair through sound investments and solid strategies that deliver success for years to come.
