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CFO and Enterprise Value

Architect of business value: Leading collaboration

February 8, 2021

RESEARCH REPORT

In brief

  • Today’s CFO is positioned to bring insights that balance pressure on top-line and bottom-line results.
  • We've identified the five most effective "levers" for CFOs, in a new role as architect of business value, to overcome barriers to strategic change.
  • Already, 88% of CFOs have embraced this role and have introduced metrics to better leverage collaboration and finance’s influence on the enterprise.

While CFOs have embraced their role as the right hand of the CEO, our latest research confirms the importance of an emerging role: architects of business value. With visibility and access to data and analytics across the enterprise, leading CFOs collaborate across the C-suite to understand risk and levers of growth.

Our research notes the five most effective levers to overcome barriers to strategic change:

  1. Visibility of the whole enterprise
  2. Analytics and access to data across the enterprise
  3. Understanding of enterprise risk
  4. Strong working relationships with entire C-suite
  5. Financial authority (assessing the economic basis of investment decisions)

CFOs also have the opportunity to look across functional areas to understand how to create customer value. They can suggest ways to bring cross-functional stakeholders together regularly and use technology to drive end-to-end insights.

For example, they could connect cloud-based solutions to production enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other systems to ingest data and visualize value chains. And they can make the most of real-time data to eliminate friction and errors in processes.

Many CFOs are already trying to gain insights to expand the influence of the finance function.

88%

of CFOs surveyed have introduced new metrics to better leverage finance’s collaboration with and influence on the enterprise.

Whether it’s combining data to streamline channels or improve both the employee experience and customer experience, CFOs can use that influence to strengthen top-line and bottom-line results.

About the Authors

Dr. Christian Campagna

Senior Managing Director – Strategy & Consulting, CFO & Enterprise Value Global Lead

Aneel Delawalla

Senior Managing Director – Accenture Strategy, CFO & Enterprise Value

ANNIE PEABODY

Managing Director – Strategy & Consulting

HARALDS ROBEZNIEKS

Senior Principal – Accenture Research

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  3. Take personal ownership for harmonizing technology and data platforms.

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