A forward-looking strategy is crucial for companies to compete in today’s fast-paced world, meaning real-time access to accurate data is essential.

It’s also a responsibility that is increasingly landing at the CFO’s door — finance chiefs occupy a unique place in their organizations, one which enables them to act as “data stewards” and drive the company’s strategy, said Aaron Levine, newly-minted CFO of FP&A and software provider Prophix.

“Other executives are more focused on their individual, functional areas,” Levine said in an interview. “CFOs get this bird's eye view, and they see the business from a more holistic manner. So I think CFOs get the strategy and help drive the strategy.”

Becoming the data stewards

That CFOs need to take a more strategic role at the business is a familiar refrain — the days of the “passive” finance chief are long gone, Ryan Van Hatten, Levine’s predecessor in Prophix’s top finance seat, told CFO Dive last year. Van Hatten transitioned to serve as the Mississauga, Ontario-based company’s chief operating officer on Feb. 6, when Levine was appointed to the CFO chair, according to a press release.

That shift means that finance chiefs are transitioning out of the typical finance approach of looking back to the past — “CFOs today are much more forward looking, and the role has evolved really to be that data steward,” Levine said.

However, taking on that data steward mantle means more than just being able to utilize analytics when they land on one’s desk; finance chiefs also need to have a transparent view of what tools the company is using to aggregate the information and where the information is coming from.

One of Levine’s top priorities in the weeks since he joined Prophix has been to analyze the company’s tech stack — for CFOs, “part of what I think our mandate is today, is to really understand and optimize the technology footprint that our businesses have,” he said.

“In fact, that's probably a lot of what I've done in my first two weeks here, has been focusing on the tech stack and the tools that we're using, not only in finance and accounting, but just broadly in the organization,” he said.

Easing age-old pain points

Winnowing down the tech stack can help CFOs not only drive strategy but attack age-old pain points in their financial processes, many of which have been exacerbated by recent changes such as the move to remote work. Taking a closer look at the tools in place can also help finance chiefs clamp down on rogue SaaS spending by employees or team members who may not know what solutions the company already has available — something that can cost companies millions, CFO Dive previously reported.

CFOs today, therefore, are thinking about “the systems footprint of their business more broadly, with the understanding of how it how it really is a value creator and drives the business forward,” Levine said.

Prophix was an attractive move for Levine in part because its solutions are focused on eliminating the historic points in financial processes. The company provides software and solutions which help automate key financial processes such as cash flow planning to mid-market companies.

Levine is also joining the team with a background in the software industry that provides him with a unique perspective on how to approach the needs of today’s finance teams as a CFO selling to other finance chiefs. Before joining Prophix, Levine served as finance chief for customer service software provider ChurnZero, and has also served as CFO for software providers including BluVector and Fishbowl, according to his LinkedIn profile.

 "I have dealt with the exact pain points that we saw for our customers,” he said.

For example, when it comes to financial reporting, much of it is done on ERP systems, but those systems rely on backward-looking, historical data. For forward-looking insights, many companies still rely on tools like Excel, but with a remote workforce, bringing the disparate data from different systems into a spreadsheet has become all the more challenging, he said. This puts even more pressure on CFOs to adopt new technologies to help ease that pain point.

“This is another tool to use and hopefully it frees up some of your time and frees up some of your resources,” he said of bringing new solutions to CFOs’ attention.Those tools can help finance chiefs “use those analytical skills to produce insights and produce business results rather than just reporting on historical actions that have happened.”