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Tag Archives: CFO India

Budget Is No Longer The ‘Holy Grail’ Of Annual Planning

Venkataraman Srinivasan
Founder & Director

Come January and many companies will commence the annual ritual of the Financial Budget. Last year Budget will be dusted off, actual year-to-date performance will be reviewed, next year performance target will be demanded from business heads, numbers will be negotiated, financial planning and analysis (FP&A) folks will crunch and consolidate and voila, the EY 16-17 will be ready!

Certainly, this is how the ‘classical’ budgeting process works. But is this how companies now do their budget today? A large number of companies no longer follow this approach and even if they do, the Budget is no longer the ‘Holy Grail’ of annual planning.

Here are 5 reasons why.
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Use of Technology to fuel the growth and mitigate the risk

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Lakshminarayanan Hariharan, PMP
Vice President at MyCFO India

It is an assumption that implementation and use of technology – hardware, software and tools – will result in fueling growth to business. Growth must not be merely defined as top-line growth. It should be inclusive of efficient supply-chain management for inventory control, cash management, fast-tracking period closing and performance management.

The leverage of technology is very diverse from industry to industry. Aerospace, medical, digital, media, research & development etc. witness higher adoption of technology to provide an edge for companies. On the other hand, companies in retail, manufacturing and BFSI segments leverage technology for efficiencies in business process and delivering quality customer services.

There is a conscious effort across industries to eliminate or limit the amount of in-person services that the organization used to provide and instead the customer is being provided the platform to use / source the products or services, get data and analytic’s , and provide intelligence for decisions, all through the leverage of technology. The following graph gives an industry-wise representation of IT spending as a percentage to revenue, providing an insight on the extent of IT leverage across the board. Continue reading →

CFO-HR Harmony towards common business goals

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Venkataraman Srinivasan
Founder & Director

“The company benefits immensely if the finance and human resource functions are in accord”

The HR Head and the CFO are the respective leaders of the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ domains in a company. The former deals with people,culture, and behaviour – the soft side;the latter with data, facts, and money – the hard side. While these may look like completely divergent functions, for a company’s success, they need to be in harmony.Most crucial decisions are usually taken collectively, often with unanimous feedback from both the soft and the hard sides of businesses. Continue reading →

The new-age CFO and his many avatars

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new age, cfo media, business, hindu businessline india

Many avatars of the new age CFO

The one key element that has changed the way of doing business is the flow of information. The new-age CFO must now realise that he is no longer expected to linger in the background and surface every time the results are to be announced.

As the one person in the organisation who has intimate knowledge of both the past performance and the expected future growth, it becomes his responsibility not only to steer the company towards a better future but also be able to provide a transparent, big picture view of the future, to internal stakeholders, customers and investors. Continue reading →

MyCFO.in looking to raise PE funding, triple client base

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Wealth Tree Partners, which runs the online CFO servicing business through MyCFO.in, is looking to raise capital from private equity funds next year, said a senior company official.

“We want to raise growth capital from a fund that has had experience of scaling services business and can help us expand. From next year, we want to start implementing our plans of offering specific products and industry vertical based services, for which we would require Continue reading →

A CFO`s guide to balancing company spends and investments

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A CFO is amongst a rare breed of people who is not just responsible for his own function/ department but is also required to contribute to the other functions within an organization. The CFO now has to straddle and importantly contribute to the company’s business functions. The CFO is often labelled as someone who is conservative, takes a very ‘numerical’ view of the business and does not understand the business intricacies.

Companies think hard when it comes to investments or spends relating to diversification to new geographies, new product introduction, Capex, R&D, marketing spends, M&A activities etc. While there is always a sense of optimism associated with any new initiative, these need to be viewed from a stand point of whether the spends will generate reasonable returns over a finite time frame. This is where the role of the CFO becomes crucial. The CFO here not just need to look at situations like these from a numerical stand point but also need to understand the underlying business assumptions that make up the spreadsheets.