New Role: When the CFO Sells to Other CFOs

by Cesar Bacani, 01 August 2012

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topics:
Management

tags:
business partnering

If the CEO is from Jupiter and the CFO is from Mars, chances are the company may not operate as efficiently and productively as it potentially can. There can even be damaging undercurrents of mistrust.

“Between you and me, the CEO always says he wants finance to be heavily integrated into the sales team, but he really doesn’t want me around,” a CFO once confided to this reporter. “I’ve been here a long time and I’m aware of the tricks of the trade, so he’s afraid I’d figure out that some of the things he is doing he shouldn’t be doing.”

This does not seem to be the case in the Asia offices of Brocade, a US-owned US$2.1-billion-in-annual-sales network solutions company that has just launched a new subscription-based product called Brocade Network Subscription (BNS). Both Charlie Foo, Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific, and John Bock, Controller Asia Pacific and Japan, appear to be natives of the same planet.

Foo describes Bock as “my partner . . . John supports me closely; I look to him for guidance in the financial aspects of things, on growth, on how we want to structure Asia, how to put the right investment in the right areas.”

He adds: “You know who my biggest salesman is for BNS? It’s John -- because a lot of the BNS sales pitches is with the CFO. We will bring in John and John will be able to articulate [the issues and benefits], he’ll be able to express them in the right context. He speaks the same language.”

For his part, Bock says: “With Charlie, our relationship is much more of a partnership. When our global CFO was here, he said, ‘You need to have John more involved.’ So Charlie and I have to work on that.”

“From what I’ve seen and what I’ve read and based on what some recruiters tell me, the new role for the CFO is to be more of a sales-y type of person,” Bock continues. “Obviously there has to be some sort of firewall between the CFO and a traditional sales role, but as long as they are out there just assisting the sales organisation by addressing the financial benefits [of the product], then they don’t have to worry about what I call ‘compliance’ issues.”

Bean counter, sales partner

Welcome to the ever expanding remit of finance today. The journey from bean counter to business partner has long started in multinationals, though some may be more advanced than others. “It’s not a new thing at Unilever,” says Paul Stevenson, who is VP, Finance Controller, Asia, Africa, central and Eastern Europe at the global consumer products giant.

“When I first joined more than 25 years ago, my first job was as management accountant working alongside a very dynamic bunch of branch managers. That was a business partnering role. Even today, although my job title is Controller, a large part of my time is spent on performance management and business partnering on supply chain.”

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