Rising Cost of Funds Heightens Profit Focus for CFOs
(29 January 2024 – Europe) Capital has become more expensive and difficult to access since the pandemic, resulting in a defined shift toward prioritising profitability ahead of growth at all costs.
The macroeconomic landscape has influenced companies’ approaches to capital deployment PYMTS reports. In the past, businesses could accelerate their rate of capital deployment due to relatively easy access to capital. Now the best prepared organisations are assigning a greater weighting to a more concentrated set of investments as opposed to distributing their funding too broadly, with major ramifications for future dated capital expenditure plans.
CFOs are now playing offense rather than defence by investing in their functions and helping the rest of the business invest in theirs. The CFO’s role has evolved to include a closer partnership with technical teams to identify and integrate digital tools that improve efficiency and deliver better products to customers such as artificial intelligence (AI).
While AI solutions specific to the finance function are still in the early development phase, Cedar envisions a future where AI could automate tasks and roles within organisations.
“Right now, conversations at the board level, executive level, and I would say in the entire company are focused on those unit economic fundamentals. What are we building? How do we price it? How do we sell it? And how do we get the right ROI for our products while at the same time solving a real pain point for the market?” stated Cedar CFO Scott Stockberger for PYMNT’s series A Day in the Life of a CFO.
“This is a muscle that we as CFOs have always had, but one that probably hasn’t needed to be flexed as strongly over the last two to three years. We need to set our organizations up for success. Looking ahead to the future of the CFO role there is an ongoing shift, where internal conversations involving the finance team are evolving from. Are we allowed to do this from a budget perspective to should we do this from a budget perspective?” Stockberger added.
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