Inside The Mentoring Round, CFO Bob Purcell emphasizes the importance of having a comprehensive set of metrics and KPIs to effectively monitor and guide the company’s operations, akin to a pilot’s dashboard. CFO Purcell stresses the necessity of providing customers with exceptional experiences, enabling them to concentrate on their core business without concerns about back-office […]
Top Priorities: Driving Value and Developing the Talent Pipeline
Novelis CFO Dev Ahuja highlights his efforts to ensure that finance plays a more prominent role in driving decisions and shaping outcomes across the organization. Ahuja explains his approach involves pushing value levers and making a tangible impact on the company’s profitability and results.
916: Maximizing M&A Speed to Value | Michael Cox, CFO, IRIS Software Group
CFO Michael Cox says that it was near the end of 2022 when the IRIS Software Group began to realize that the guiding philosophy that had motivated and incentivized the UK-based software company to complete 30 acquisitions within 6 years needed an upgrade. Cox tells us that the IRIS management team was discussing the…
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897: Satisfying a Growth Appetite | Bobby Leibrock, CFO, Red Hat Software
Last October, when it was announced that Bobby Leibrock would become the next CFO of IBM subsidiary Red Hat, finance team members no doubt understood that the open-source developer was coronating not just any IBM veteran but a strategic finance executive who for years had been entrenched along the front lines of IBM’s software acquisition…
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884: Understanding Your Business Thesis | Betsy Ward, CFO, MassMutual
Finance leader Betsy Ward wants you to know that she doesn’t have an itchy trigger finger—but she does have an inner trigger and knows when it's been set off. There's no doubt that few professional colleagues would ever think to associate the time-tested gunslinger trope with the mild-mannered Ward, who has led insurance giant MassMutual…
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859: The Everyday, Conscious Effort to Add Value | Rajat Bahri, CFO, Icertis
It was nearly 18 years ago that Icertis CFO Rajat Bahri stepped into the CFO office for the first time. Thus began a stretch of time that Bahri, not unlike many of his CFO peers, has populated with various distinguished CFO career chapters ranging from 3 to 5 to 8 years in duration. …
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858: Extending the Hand of Leadership | Brian Gladden, CFO, Zelis
If you had told Brian Gladden in 2006 that he would shortly be working for a Saudi crown prince, the 14-year GE finance veteran may have replied using a shorthand equivalent to “when pigs fly.” As a GE finance executive, Gladden had served in a string of senior roles, including a number in which he…
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840: Putting a Spin on Your Talent Pinwheel | Bryan Morris, CFO, Demandbase
Among the recruitment milestones that populate Bryan Morris’s CFO resume, few can match the 6-month talent acquisition binge that he launched during the first quarter of 2015. “In terms of key hires, I never hired faster than I did then,” comments Morris, as he begins to lay out the circumstances that led to his need…
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838: The Unseen Levers of Customer Impact | Mike Taylor, CFO, Gusto
When Mike Taylor mentions the customer experience during our talk, his intent—unlike that of many of his CFOs peers—is not to boast of some vast reservoir of data from which customer insights are routinely being gleaned. Instead, he brings this up to let us know that there are some things that finance still struggles to…
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Informing Management with Real Time Data | Anna King, CFO, Mesh Payments
Guest CFO: Anna King of Mesh Payments Episode: #836: Building Consensus to Go Real-Time
822: The CFO Trifecta: Finance, Strategy, Leadership | Peter Walker, CFO, Sterling
When Peter Walker looks back on his career, he doesn't hesitate to highlight “the big asks,” or those times when he asked a boss to "take a chance" on him. One such instance occurred when he asked his CEO to sponsor his studies as he pursued an executive MBA on nights and weekends at New…
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819: Set Your Data Free! | Glenn Hopper, CFO, Sandline Global
Just where and how Glenn Hopper came to acquire his finance skillset exposes an organizational dysfunction to which no small number of finance leaders have likely contributed. As a product manager for a small telecommunications firm, Hopper was asked by the vice president of marketing to begin giving presentations at a recurring management meeting regarding…
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