New CFO (Chief Financial Officer) : how to ensure a successful start
As the second or third in command, a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is always eagerly awaited when joining a new company. If you've just been appointed to this role, you'll need to prove yourself quickly as you are responsible for identifying the strategic levers to improve the company's bottom line.
But where should you start? What are the priority actions to take in the first few weeks? Find out in our white paper the best actions to demonstrate your technical expertise as soon as you take up your post, while showing as well that you know how to act as a true business partner for the other members of the Executive Board.
With your extended responsibilities, you'll need to prioritise your actions depending on the main challenges of your new structure. To achieve this, you'll need to take the pulse of the organisation and carefully study the company's culture.
This means meeting all the back-office support teams for which you are responsible, but also taking the time to talk to the operational teams (production, customer service, sales) to identify their specific needs and understand the issues of your company's sector and market. Building relationships will help you strengthen your legitimacy with the various departments, including operational ones, and thus foster adoption for the changes you will ask for.
At the same time, you'll need to gather various financial information and focus on a few key indicators: it will be up to you to suggest the most relevant ones for assessing the company's performance and monitoring the main risks.
In addition to accurate bookkeeping, several strategic documents such as the budget or the cash flow forecast will be very useful if they are complete and up to date. If they are not, it is key to update them as soon as possible to give you a clear picture of your company's finances and liquidity.
You will also need to set up your dashboards in order to monitor and optimise the actions of your finance department but also of the company in general. Opting for specialised software will help you save time and optimise resources required for reporting updates. Indeed, the CFO is the guarantor of the reliability of the figures communicated to the ExecBoard, the board of directors and also external stakeholders (banking partners, audit firms, etc.).
Admittedly, this promises to be a busy period. And you know that these first three months are decisive. By acting methodically from the very first weeks you will be able to convince the members of ExecBoard and the various teams of your skills, in order to rally them to your vision.
Becoming CFO is also a fantastic opportunity to have a tangible influence on the life of a company.
Are you ready to take up this challenge? For more advice on the best practices to succeed as a new CFO, download our free white paper :
