I am posting part of a blog here so it gets some "eyeballs" and generates some conversation. On the surface, impacting the customer experience as the CFO seems a bit of a stretch. Historically, CFOs have had limited interactions with customers, most often times only engaging them when there are issues to be resolved relative to accounts receivable. The good news is that CFOs recognize that they need to develop relationships with customers in order to better serve customer needs, manage customer perceptions, deliver value, and identify opportunities to deepen and strengthen relationships. There are four key avenues in which Finance can pursue to impact the customer experience with the goals of improving customer retention (reducing customer churn), customer satisfaction, and the lifetime value customers: Ensuring the right systems are in place to optimize the visibility into all actions that impact the customer experience across the enterprise. 1. Integrablity of business systems- ERP, CRM, CPM systems which can include social features that allow real-time chatter within these systems. 2. Building direct relationships with customers throughout the customer lifecycle * Involvement beyond being the bad cap and resolving crisis. * Build relationships with CFOs at customers. 3. Understand what Customers Want * Work with sales, marketing and business development colleagues to develop communications and research strategies to identify and confirm customer wants and needs. * Work to understand what customers need before they even know they need it. 4. Understand the real value of what your Company offers to customers * Work with sales to create communications with customers where the customers communicate what they view as the value being offered to them. Separate the actual from what your company may only perceive of the value being offered. * Work with sales to effectively communicate the economic value of all dimensions of vale offered by your company. 5. Understand the customer experience from the customer’s perspective * Work with sales and your customer service to identify what customers believe you are doing well and why, and in which areas you can do better and why. The challenge in understanding and impacting both the customer experience and the employee experience for the CFO becomes much less daunting if we heed the advice of John Hugo, Vice President, Financials Products, Workday , and former SVP, Principal Accounting Officer, Life Time Fitness) to align the customer experience with the employee experience. John conveyed that the alignment of the customer and employee experience allowed him to define and manage success in Finance during his tenure at Life Time fitness. John shared that leveraging customer success metrics by defining a framework by looking at co-workers across departmental lines as internal customers allowed him to measure a key dimension of the productivity of Finance in terms of how well the internal customers of Finance were served. I.E, what the Net Promoter Score for Finance for internal departments (internal customers) which included HR, sales and operations. In terms of impacting and optimizing the external and internal customer experience valuable insights are found in examining the intersection of internal and external customer feedback. Aligning the quality of the external and internal customer experience fuels a high performance culture within and beyond Finance. What Skills Matter in Finance? The discussions around what skills matter most was facilitated by sharing ten skills/traits that past CFO Alliance roundtable attendees and surveys have identified as the most important: * Interpersonal Skills / Relationship Building * Financial Reporting * Effective Communication- written (e-mail, reports) and oral (presentation) * Financial Reporting * Analytical Abilities * Problem- Solving * Tech Savvy- Acumen relative to financial systems and other key business systems * Leadership * Innovative/ Entrepreneurial * Passion for Learning / Embrace Change * Knowledge of Relevant Industries including Competitive & Regulatory Dynamics It is important to note that the skills/traits were put in an order to facilitate discussion and not meant to be a top 10 list. There was a consensus that all skills identified were important, and discussions evolved to consider which skills/traits mattered most. Three skills that were identified as being of increasing importance were: * The desire and ability to develop a thorough understanding of a business (inside and out, business and operations, what companies do for customers). * The ability to communicate financial information to non-financial professionals * A passion for learning and embracing change. Skills Gaps in Finance Conversations around the most important skills for financial professionals evolved into CFOs identifying what they view as the biggest skills gaps in Finance talent from their perspectives relative to their teams and Finance professionals who they had interviewed to join their teams in 2016. CFOs identified three key areas of skills gaps: * A general lack of intellectual curiosity, resourcefulness, and almost an inherent fear of failure. * Communication skills in terms of what and how information is communicated within and outside the walls of Finance. * Analytical skills to the point of making the right inferences and recommendations. * Inability to mine actual business intelligence from data. * The ability to communicate honestly about the challenges they face and what they need to be successful. Delivering the Right Employee Experience What defines the best employee experience in Finance? This is not a “one size fits all”answer, far from it. The question should be framed as follows: what defines the best Finance employee experience at my company? That answer depends on the current personality portfolio of your team, what you want that portfolio to become (I will address that in my next blog), your company’s culture, the markets your company serves now and wants to serve in the future, the current and future skills portfolio of your team, and the current and future strategic objectives of your company. The good news is that there are dimensions of a productive employee experience that can be leveraged in customizing the best employee experience within Finance, which should share several characteristics of the employee experience for any company employee across the enterprise. CFOs in attendance shared several valuable tips and words of wisdom for fellow CFOs to leverage in delivering an employee experience that fuels productivity in Finance: * “People do not care what you know unless they you know that you care.” * The generational demographic of your team must be keep top of mind (i.e., millennials. Gen X, baby boomer, Gen Z). * Lead by example, remove the perception of Finance as only the numbers person, have fun, experience all aspects of the business, care about each employee and customers. * Develop programs to train team members to communicate beyond the department. * Always promote the team, deliver an inclusive environment, and offer incentives at the team level. * Consider the dynamics the physical environment. Do you have remote employees? * What are the impacts to team chemistry? * Embrace the diversity of your group and move them in the same direction. The foundation of optimizing the strategic value offered by the Office of the CFO at any company is having a Finance team of high performers. The definition of high performance (success) in Finance needs to align directly with company success. The definition of company success is in a constant state of evolution. Companies of all sizes are realizing that company value in today’s world is driven more and more by the effectiveness of customer relationship management and human capital optimization. CFOs need to assess, adapt and cultivate the skill set of their teams to deliver. Thoughts?