The Changing Role Of A CFO – New Competences And Skills Are Necessary To Face New Challenges

Haroldo Monteiro

The role of a CFO has been changing recently. A CFO can no longer be seen as someone who is responsible for cutting costs as a means of maintaining the profits. It is not a matter of dominating the financial principles; instead, CFOs must develop a strategic discipline to be effective financial leaders (Caglar, Mani & Peters 2015). Although a strong background in accounting and compliance is still important, there is a tendency for CFOs to improve their non-technical skills through financial planning and analysis, treasury and capital markets experience.

COVID Impact on CFOs and Their Companies

Dave Bookbinder and Steve Rosvold

Dave and Steve discuss the COVID impact on CFOs, their companies - including CFO.University - and the path forward.

One Big Thing Finance Professionals Need To Deliver Value

Andrew Codd

There are two types of accountant and finance professional, those that ensure the appropriate controls and compliance are in place so that the numbers are accurate and consistent – let’s call this preserving value, and then there are those who are coming out from behind their desks, engaging with the business on meaningful problems, solving them, being a trusted sparring partner and financial mentor – let’s call this creating and capturing. How do we make sure we have the opportunity to be the latter?

Conventional Driver-Based Activity Based Costing (ABC)

Brian Higgins

Recognizing the shortcomings of conventional absorption cost accounting, Activity-Based Costing has emerged as a tool whereby product cost distortion, as computed in conventional absorption cost accounting, was to lessened the inaccuracies of ACA. ABC was designed to eliminate the large cost pools and unrealistic allocation methods associated with traditional costing methods. However, the ABC system uses a two- stage process for allocating resource costs first to activities then, in turn, allocating activity costs to cost objects which also creates the potential for significance errors.