High Tech CFOs: Evolving into the future

High tech CFOs drive strategic change

Our research, CFO Now: Breakthrough speed for breakout value revealed that elite CFOs are stepping up to guide the organization, moving beyond their traditional reporting duties to identify opportunities that drive value. As part of that transformation and in response to escalating responsibilities, CFOs are embracing three distinct roles:

• Economic guardian
• Architect of business value
• Catalyst of digital strategy

Effectively executed, this evolution equips the industries to rapidly go after new market opportunities and address new sources of disruption.

Our research showed a pair of interesting industry trends specific to high tech CFOs in:

1. Outperforming their peers in digital transformation: Empowered by the data savviness pervasive in high tech companies, the high tech CFOs are more likely to capitalize on digital investments to streamline their operations and further adopt technology that supports predictive, data-driven decision-making.
2. Opportunity to improve: High tech CFOs can advance the goals of the organization in two key areas by:
• Increasing collaboration with their supply chain and operations colleagues to help the company manage risk and drive growth.
• Focusing on their talent agendas and crafting a strategy to ensure they have the right people and the right structure in place to take full advantage of the capabilities and infrastructure they are building.

Areas where high tech CFOs excel

The unique role of high tech companies as digital innovators and champions keeps the focus on forward-looking technologies. This digital fluency has given high tech CFOs an edge over their peers in two key areas:

Roadmap to further advancements

While high tech CFOs are operating from a strong base of expertise, our analysis shows that they have additional opportunities to advance the enterprise and the finance organization, while preparing for future challenges and change.

To realize the promise of the moment, high tech finance executives need to focus on tighter collaboration with the operations and supply chain organizations to mitigate risk and help navigate disruption. They also need to continue retooling the finance organization, moving beyond traditional roles and investing in their talent strategies. By focusing on these initiatives, CFOs can increase the competitive position of their companies and further solidify their position as strategic advisors across the C-Suite.