4 Buckets for Bucks

A lot of people aren't really all that familiar with the sorts of things that a CFO and a finance team do so, what are some of the biggest challenges your team faces on a day to day basis in terms of trying to carry out the company's vision?

Well I think the most important thing for a company is your prior question is how do you think about capital allocation and ensure that you're investing enough in the business you have today while planting the seeds for future growth so capital allocation becomes one of the most important things we do for a finance team I sort of break the responsibilities into four different buckets the first goes right to capital allocation it's how are you a trusted advisor to your business leader how do you give them the tools the visibility the analytics the metrics so they can make the right trade-offs when I talk about investing for the long term or making trade-offs today my view is that when you're privileged to work with great business leaders as I am they're gonna have the acumen the wisdom the judgment to make those trade-offs and we need to be giving them the data the analytics the tools so that they can make the sharpest decision so that's the first one trusted advisor.

Obviously core to everything we do is risk management guardianship controller ship you can never under invest in that that is a critical element of it and to do that well you need to have the right IT systems and controls I frequently say that when you're in finance any manual process is an accident waiting to happen and it is so not interesting or sexy to be investing in that part of what one does but if you look throughout history I think one of the problems for companies has not has been under investing in the systems and controls to give everyone the visibility they need so ensuring you're doing that the right way and then obviously for all of us core to our success is our people and so making sure that we're investing the right way in our people those are the four buckets when I think about how do you build a really strong finance organization.