In light of the evolving role of the CFO, the CFO Story series S24 has compiled a list of CFOs, thought leaders and industry experts in a dynamic exchange of insights, ideas, and innovations. The sessions covered topics such as CFO growth strategies, financial innovation, CFO success stories, finance leadership insights and more.

The modern-day CFO plays a critical role in determining the company's direction and acts as a strategic partner to the CEO and the board. By coordinating financial strategy with long-term business objectives, this collaboration helps the organization be flexible and adaptable in the face of change.

CFOs are crucial in simplifying processes and identifying areas for improvement in addition to handling data. Their initiative in implementing new procedures and technology has the potential to greatly increase productivity, lower expenses, and increase profit margins.

CFOs are Changemakers

CFOs have a leadership role and are accountable for developing the upcoming generation of financial experts. By cultivating an environment that values ongoing education and creativity, they guarantee that their staff members possess the abilities and perspective required to assist the organization in achieving its strategic goals.

As the years progress, it can be noted that CFOs are quickly ascending to the role of strategic business partners, actively engaged in decision-making processes and corporate strategy.

On the concept of ‘Navigating the Future: Strategic Financial Leadership in an Era of Digital Transformation and Infrastructure Growth”, Sivasailam N, Administrative Member, Karnataka State Administrative Tribunal, Bangalore, shared food for thought on the significance of the CFO’s role. He mentioned how a large number of companies are having Indian CFOs all over the world. The number of CFOs graduating into the next force, which is the CEO, has been rising since the 2000s.

Sivasailam then gave an example of the telecom sector, which continues to do public service, where it’s nowhere a public monopoly. In fact, it’s a privately provided competitive service. He did inform that there is no requirement that a public service should be provided only by the government of a public sector. It can be provided better and cheaper by the private sector as well. 

“This is an area where CFOs can work towards expanding the area of operation of an institution,” added Sivasailam.

 

The session proceeded to host a panel discussion on the topic: A lens for dealing with Generative AI Unknowns at Breakthrough Speed for breakout value.

Exploring Tech in Finance - Talks on Generative AI

The panel explored how, beyond the hype, Gen AI has the potential to transform key financial processes such as report writing, forecasting, risk management, and fraud detection. Panelists discussed concerns like the rush to adopt AI-driven by FOMO, as well as issues related to data privacy, model bias, and the critical role of human oversight.

The panel was chaired by Mohua Mukherjee, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, who expertly led talks on AI with an exceptional group of diverse, new-age CFOs representing a variety of industries: manufacturing, consulting, fin-tech, healthcare and news media. 

Shreyas K, Group CFO & DTO, Narayana Nethralaya Group of Eye Hospitals, flagged off on the topic of the use of Generative AI in finance. He gave a few instances where the technology helps with purposes like budgeting, reporting automation, generating summaries, and so on. Other key areas he mentioned were risk management, picking up trends / simulating scenarios for investments, creating prompts,  etc., by stressing the fact between what is riskier and what is not. 

He cautioned about challenges by saying, “That is where all of us need to get better.” He then went on to say that a lot of strategic planning, cost optimization - what expenses are needed for each scenario, and what our investments are going to be, including various other scenarios can be done through generative AI. 

He highlighted that, “A lot of decision making is good because generative AI is instant if you have a query”.

Regarding the manufacturing sector, Sanjeev Dhiman, Group CFO India, Arkema, voiced out generative AI’s beneficiaries in manufacturing companies.

“I would say that practically everything and anything that moves in the manufacturing company can come under a bed of AI in designs, simulating results for the R&D, customer service platforms, inventory management and the list goes on.”

He added that companies are not actually not implementing AI as a tool. “So what we are implementing is the processes, data and computing. The combination of computing and data is expected to generate intelligence for us and give us insights into the processes”.

The panel indicated on how the trend for the last couple of years has been having everyone talk about data and AI, with businesses changing their structure for the same.

Moving on to another panel, the speakers shared views on the topic, “CFO Fast Track: Accelerating Your to the C-Suite”.

Strategies for Growth

Chaired by Raghavendra GS, CFO, JUSPAY, the session aimed on reflect on objectives such as: building a strategic mindset, techniques for leading high-performance finance teams and cross-function collaboration.

Typically, in a services business, it's all about how you efficiently look at what kind of additional costs you have, the discretion you can manage, etc. “You should be able to manage your overall costs in the long-term,” said Saurabh More, Group CFO, CIEL.

He stressed on balance being a vital aspect. It’s important to be at a consistent level of balance especially at a point when your ambitions become relevant. Otherwise the tendency of the revenue could go slower, having you thinking what to do to make additional investments. Therefore, balance is important, particularly in aiding you to be able to influence when you have those discussions with the management level or the board level. It's important to keep sight of overall gross margins a bit higher and kind of keep being sustainable.

Soundar Raj, CFO & Board Member - NXP India, “Culture gives strategy perfect results. If you don't build a culture, the alignment will not be there within your team or across the team or the company. It's that one factor that binds the company, infusing it to become more confident and more successful. If we don't build that sort of a culture, then any kind of strategic decisions will never work."