Recently, I was talking to the Head of Innovation at one of the world’s largest companies, who told me that in the first two years of their corporate accelerator, they just bled money. None of the ideas being developed in their accelerator brought any commercial success for 24 months.
In this piece Bill Denney, a finance leader living in Green Bay, Wisconsin, describes a successful close, it’s benefits and what it takes to get there.
What does a successful financial close look like?
In 2022 Victor committed himself to “watching film” to hone his leadership skills. In late February he shared some of his learning in 10 Reflections of a Leader. In this CFO Talk, Victor describes each reflection in more detail. This is Part II of II.
How many Full Time Equivalents (FTEs) it takes to keep the Finance Function wheel turning varies by industry and business complexity, but to determine if you are getting more or less efficient over time, taking the # of Finance function FTEs per $X of revenue is a good way to measure it. Taking the # of Finance Function FTEs per # of transactions or number of accounts in the Chart-of-Accounts is also a good metric to track.
In the past inflation worries sent shivers up the spines of CFOs.
That makes sense, because in the past CFOs were primarily responsible for cost control and inflation takes the control out of costs.
