Reinventing the CFO: How Financial Managers Can Transform Their Roles and Add Greater Value

On the heels of a decade of scandals and the new pressures brought on by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, corporations expect far more from their CFOs than simply managing the numbers. They expect decision-making support and performance insights that can improve bottom-line results. Unfortunately, the complexity and detail inherent in CFOs’ jobs keep them shackled to budgeting and transaction-processing systems that leave little time for value-adding activities.

Jeremy Hope says it’s time to redefine the role of CFOs in today’s organizations, liberating them from ineffective number-crunching responsibilities and enabling them to focus on helping managers improve performance. Grounded in extensive research, Reinventing the CFO outlines seven critical roles—from streamlining redundant processes to regulating risk to identifying a few key measures—that CFOs must take on in order to successfully transform the finance operation.

Challenging many of the finance field’s accepted practices and systems, this bold book revolutionizes the role of financial managers and frees them to make smart, ethical, strategic decisions that add real value to the firm.

Jeremy Hope is Research Director of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, a not-for-profit collaborative focused on improving firms’ performance management processes. He is a chartered accountant and a coauthor of Beyond Budgeting, Transforming the Bottom Line, and Competing in the Third Wave, all published by HBS Press.