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676: The Next Transformation Journey | Paul Lundstrom, CFO, Flex

676: The Next Transformation Journey | Paul Lundstrom, CFO, Flex

Back in 2015, after nearly two decades of diligent career-building across United Technologies, Paul Lundstrom fixed his career builder’s gaze upon the span of companies known as the Fortune 500.

Like many seasoned finance executives who spend the balance of their careers inside large enterprise companies, Lundstrom had to confront the obvious truth that for every company, the CFO office has but one occupant.

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By all accounts, a Fortune 500 company was a worthy target for Lundstrom’s CFO ambitions, but here, too, the number of CFO roles quickly diminishes when you consider the industry-specific focus that spans the arc of Lundstrom’s career and that of so many others.  

Read the article on Forbes.com

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  • 676: The Next Transformation Journey | Paul Lundstrom, CFO, Flex
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CFOTL: Tell us a little about Flex …

Lundstrom: I’ve been with Flex now for about 6 months. Flex is a $24 billion, top-line, global contract manufacturing company. What’s contract manufacturing? Well, we make products. We manufacture products on behalf of other companies, and we specialize in very high-precision manufacturing, supply chain, and logistics. The firm has traditionally been called an EMS (electronics manufacturing services) company, but I’d say that over the years, we’ve evolved into quite a bit more than this and have a very diverse set of customers.

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The reach for this business goes far and wide. You’ll find us in everything from the tech space—name a tech company, and we probably produce something for it—to automotive to consumer products and more. We make components for cell phones, smartphones, and laptops, as well as products like high-end vacuum cleaners for Dyson. We have a really wide range of big-scale operations in 30 different countries. We’re a very interesting, diverse, high tech manufacturing company.

As far as the pandemic goes, we really want to emerge strong as we get through the tail end of this. I think that we’ve learned a lot about the modern workplace over the past 12 months—about working from home and travel. We’ve learned that the whole world can work differently and more productively. I think that this is going to reshape how we do business a little bit. You’ll see less travel. You’ll see more remote workplaces. Do we have to spend what we spend on rent for some of these ivory towers around the world? Probably not.

I guess I would put it this way: What we save on discretionary, we can invest in higher-return growth. We want to emerge stronger, better, leaner, quicker, and with more resources available to invest in more productive pursuits. This is how I’m looking at it.

Value Quote: Since the Pandemic, I think that we’ve learned that the whole world can work differently and more productively. … We want to emerge stronger, better, leaner, quicker, and with more resources available to invest in more productive pursuits. This is how I’m looking at it. jb

Flex | www.flex.com | San Jose, California

Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: CFO, contract manufacturing, Fortune 500, pandemic, resource allocation, turnaround

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