India can proudly boast of having evolved as a country that has some of the best corporate and accounting practices in the world, especially when one considers debacles noticed in the high-profile Enron case and the more current subprime mess. And the character behind this strong development is the chief financial offer.
This role, once known to be a bean counter, was headed by the person who monitored travel vouchers, has metamorphosed into a more strategic and mission critical role. ?Today?s CFO serves as the company?s chief profitability officer, chief strategist and chief compliance officer along with liaising with the investor community,? says Sanjay Deshmukh, country manager, India and SAARC region, with Business Objects, a business intelligence and software solutions company.
The role of the CFO has become multifarious roles, recasting business models in line with capacity constraints, managing costs and inventory in line with supply and demand projections. Eventually, manage revenue and expenses to optimise financial performance. A CFO today is required to take higher-level decisions, which never happened few years ago.
With the changing environment in business approach, CFOs have a larger job in managing company corpus times,” reminisced, Uday Phadke, President of finance and legal, with Mahindra & Mahindra Group, at a recent conference organised by the CFO Asia magazine, in Mumbai.
S Ramakrishna, CFO of Symcons systems and management consultant say, ? Sharp focus on numbers, strategic vision is very important for today?s CFOs.?
Along with the role change, there has also been a drastic change in the pay packets and methods of hiring. Ramakrishna points out that about a decade ago at the entry level finance professionals would bag about Rs 7,000 per month and today they are drawing around Rs 25,000 per month. Earlier, were hired immediately after graduation, but today, companies prefer going to B-schools.
Then again, there is a challenge of attrition. Ramakrishna points out that today, banks are facing an attrition of 10% among CFOs while IT companies are seeing a high attrition rate of 20%. The CFO, however, will be a decision maker many would want to meet.