CFOs need to groom themselves for the digital age
Exito’s CFO Leadership Summit highlighted the transformation in the Indian business arena, and emphasised on the need for developing versatile capability among CFOs…
The 12th edition of CFO Leadership Summit organised by Exito Media Concepts Pvt. Ltd. in Mumbai on June 13, 2018, delivered good insights on the emerging challenges of the CFOs against the backdrop of the fast-changing business environment. This summit served as a guide to the journey of the CFOs to attain the next level of excellence in their profession. Top 20 CFOs were honoured at the event for their continued commitment to excellence, and developing best practices and strategies.
It is well known that the job portfolio of CFOs is no longer restricted to just finance management, rather it is continuously evolving to accommodate more and more demanding tools of business management including digitisation, data analytics, artificial intelligence, risk management and several non-financial information analyses that drive the financials.
THE DEMANDING SCENARIO
The conference started with the welcome note delivered by Rishikesh Shetty, Founder and MD, Exito Media Concepts Pvt. Ltd., who highlighted the transformation in the Indian business environment, and stressed the need for versatile skills to be successful as a CFO in today’s complex industry scenario. Next up, the Global CFO of Netmagic, Alok Bajpai, deliberated the industry keynote suggesting the need for the all-around grooming of the CFOs – who are practically expected to deliver no less than CEOs under the circumstances today.
SOLUTIONS TO CHALLENGES
There were several presentations at the event by the partner companies. Richard Johnson, Director, Solutions Group, Asia Pacific, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, shed light on ‘How data science can help companies manage T&E spends without impacting the businesses’. Anantharaman Balakrishnan, Head Enterprise Business Development, Amazon Internet Services Pvt Ltd, talked about ‘Unlocking resources for digital transformation’. Archibald Serrao, Business Manager, Oracle NetSuite, spoke on ‘Why fast-growing companies adopt cloud financials to accelerate growth’. John E Matheson, Chairman, One Delta Technology Solutions Pvt Ltd, focused on ‘Value creation through legal compliance’. Also, Ramesh Iyer, Senior Adviser, Happay, discussed ‘The 5th wave in T&E expense management: AI enabled automation’.
MEETING EXPECTATIONS
In a panel discussion moderated by Alok Bajpai, Global CFO, Netmagic, panelists included Deepak Harlalka, CFO & Head IT, Raychem RPG Pvt Ltd; Nitin Khanna, CFO, Inorbit Malls (India) Pvt Ltd; Bibek Agarwala, CFO, Raymond Lifestyle; Ashutosh Verma, VP Product Management, PayMate India Pvt Ltd; Manas Datta, Group CFO, Wockhardt Ltd; and Dinesh Modi, CFO, Cactus Global – discussed how CFOs are entering a new era with Analytics 4.0. They stressed on the need for developing a digital mind set and focused on the journey from descriptive analytics to predictive analytics to perspective analytics.
In another highly-perceptive panel discussion which was moderated by Nabomita Mazumdar, Mentor of Change at NITI Aayog, Yogesh Dhingra, CFO & COO at Blue Dart Express Ltd, Essar Project; Sambasivan G, CFO at Tata Sky Ltd; Jayant Menghani, CFO at Company Secretary and Whole Time Director at DHL Supply Chain; Rajneesh Jain, CFO at Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd; Paresh Gupta, CFO at GVK Bio Group of Companies; and Archibald Serrao, were the panelists. They brought forward the transforming role of the CFO as a strategist-catalyst partner. They reaffirmed that although compliance does not save cost, non-compliance costs much more. Also, they stressed on the fact that every CFO needs to thoroughly understand what the CEO of the company is thinking.