by Eric Krell | page 1 of 6
Why today's top companies are finance-driven.
As soon as Microsoft Corp. finalized its new long-term strategy 18 months ago, all eyes in the conference room turned to John Connors. The company's senior vice president, finance and administration, and CFO would play a pivotal role in supporting the strategic shift. Connors made big changes within the finance function to closely align his team with four of the new strategy's core objectives: to better clarify Microsoft's future direction for shareholders, to improve the speed and quality of decision-making by dividing the company into seven business segments, to sharpen the allocation of resources, and to drive growth in several markets.
"One of the first decisions we made was to increase the number of senior-level finance people in those businesses," reports Connors. He appointed a divisional CFO to each of the seven new business units. "We've always had a very strong corporate finance function and strong field finance because those groups had P&Ls," he says, but the customer-facing portions of the business needed more high-level financial expertise. They received it.
The appointment of divisional CFOs has "allowed us to execute on multiple fronts very, very quickly in a way that would have been difficult to do in the past," says Connors. In addition, he says, the finance restructuring has brought deeper financial insight into the business groups and introduced more senior-level finance talent into the company. It has also led to an aggressive schedule for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and to broad-based efficiency initiatives, which include a reported $1 billion in cost cuts companywide to be conducted over the next 11 months.
Microsoft is not alone. The split strategy of focusing shared-services "transaction factories" on becoming as efficient as possible while simultaneously honing analytics, forecasting and planning capabilities to improve decision-making in operations is becoming increasingly popular in corporate finance, according to Accenture global managing partner Michael Sutcliff, who's based in Atlanta.
Originally Website
As soon as Microsoft Corp. finalized its new long-term strategy 18 months ago, all eyes in the conference room turned to John Connors. The company's senior vice president, finance and administration, and CFO would play a pivotal role in supporting the strategic shift. Connors made big changes within the finance function to closely align his team with four of the new strategy's core objectives: to better clarify Microsoft's future direction for shareholders, to improve the speed and quality of decision-making by dividing the company into seven business segments, to sharpen the allocation of resources, and to drive growth in several markets.
"One of the first decisions we made was to increase the number of senior-level finance people in those businesses," reports Connors. He appointed a divisional CFO to each of the seven new business units. "We've always had a very strong corporate finance function and strong field finance because those groups had P&Ls," he says, but the customer-facing portions of the business needed more high-level financial expertise. They received it.
The appointment of divisional CFOs has "allowed us to execute on multiple fronts very, very quickly in a way that would have been difficult to do in the past," says Connors. In addition, he says, the finance restructuring has brought deeper financial insight into the business groups and introduced more senior-level finance talent into the company. It has also led to an aggressive schedule for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and to broad-based efficiency initiatives, which include a reported $1 billion in cost cuts companywide to be conducted over the next 11 months.
Microsoft is not alone. The split strategy of focusing shared-services "transaction factories" on becoming as efficient as possible while simultaneously honing analytics, forecasting and planning capabilities to improve decision-making in operations is becoming increasingly popular in corporate finance, according to Accenture global managing partner Michael Sutcliff, who's based in Atlanta.
Originally Website
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