Tag Archives: perspective

The changing role of the CFO in a post-Covid-19 world

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The changing role of the CFO in a post-Covid-19 world

The changing role of the CFO in a post-Covid-19 world

Pre-Covid-19, CFOs primarily focused on reporting historical financial performance. But today, with rising logistics costs, supply chain bottlenecks, escalating input costs, and the uncertainty of sales, developing a forward-looking perspective is a must, write Chee Wee Teo, Huan Gao and Adam Mokhtee from Alvarez & Marsal.

In the months and years ahead, the CFO role must significantly evolve to keep up with the ever-changing Covid-19 environment. To be successful in the role, CFOs need to apply predictive thinking, adopt a greater strategic view, and increase their focus on forward risk assessment and contingency planning.

Develop a forward-looking perspective

Traditionally, finance teams spent 80% of their time on reporting results and 20% of their time on forecasting. In a Covid and post-Covid world, that ratio needs to shift toward a forward-looking approach that will better prepare companies to respond to unexpected events.

With this new approach, the CFO’s conversations with the CEO and the board will center on what could happen in the future. For the CFO who is accustomed to relying on historical data, this may be an uncomfortable transition, but it’s vital for the changing role of the effective CFO.

Digitize the finance function

Although digitizing processes has always been necessary for efficiency, the digitization offorecasting has become especially crucial. Leveraging digitization for predictive analytics can help anticipate challenges ahead and allow companies to stress test their business plans.

In some companies, the CFO manages the finance team while the Chief Digital Officer leads the data analytics effort. We strongly encourage the finance function to collaborate with data analytics so that the CFO can develop a predictive, forward-looking view of where the business can go.

The following should be digitization focus areas:

Customer focus:

Build a profile of key customers, their cadence in ordering products, consumption pattern and liquidity situation.

Production and inventory management:

Establish a robust production system (that captures the right production costs) all the way through to an effective sales fulfillment (that delivers the right product to customers at the right time witminimal production waste and inventory leftover). These interdependent processes are typically filled with manual touchpoints and subject to human judgement. This can be significantly augmented with digital tools to drive optimization.

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The future of supply chain management is AI and Data

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The future of supply chain management is AI and Data

The future of supply chain management is AI and Data

Because enterprises are like organisms in an economic ecosystem, the principles that enable a healthy biological ecosystem are, from a physical, chemical and informational perspective, identical to those that enable a healthy business ecosystem and that ensure the survival of members of that business ecosystem. Value is created by solving problems through the application of information and creativity. By speeding the information flows and reducing inefficiencies, we are equipping our part of the bigger picture to operate effectively, adapt quickly and evolve to meet competitive threats and exploit opportunities in the environment.

Supply chains are a crucial and complex part of the information flowing in this ecosystem. They are an intricately structured and variable system that is highly sensitive, with many possible outcomes based on even minor changes in the initial conditions or components. Supply chains feature a large collection of interacting components that are difficult to understand or examine due to their design and operations. And they represent a system in process, changing and developing over time.

It’s critical to think holistically about the information ecosystem as you prepare the digital representation of various stages of product design and development. Even a product designed in isolation from other systems and groups—whether in a specialized department or in a separate contracting organization—is still part of an information ecosystem. Information that may be inconsequential to the group that is creating the product, such as an obscure material specification that has no immediate value, will likely have value either downstream (perhaps to a distributor or engineering group) or upstream (perhaps to a procurement manager or supply chain manager).

Too often, these unseen dependencies and information relationships are neglected, and the impact of this neglect can be significant. If a piece of data that will be needed when assembling or distributing a future product is not captured, is lost or is incorrectly represented, the cost of remediation is orders of magnitude larger than that of addressing the data need at the source.

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April manufacturing output feels impact of COVID-19

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While March began to show how the coronavirus, or COVID-19, began to truly impact the economy, things came into even starker perspective in April, based on data in the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) Manufacturing Report on Business, which was released today.

The report’s key metric—the PMI—at 41.5 (a reading of 50 or higher indicates growth)—declined 7.6% from March’s 41.5, falling for the second straight month, which was preceded by two months of growth. The April reading was 7.5% below the 12-month average of 49.0 and is also the lowest reading over the last 12 months and the lowest reading going back to April 2009’s 39.9. What’s more, ISM reported that April marked the first month that the overall economy contracted after a stretch of 131 consecutive months of economic expansion.

ISM reported that two of the 18 manufacturing sectors it tracks saw growth in April, including Paper Products; and Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products. And the 15 industries reporting contraction in April, in order, are: Printing & Related Support Activities; Furniture & Related Products; Transportation Equipment; Textile Mills; Fabricated Metal Products; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Machinery; Plastics & Rubber Products; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Petroleum & Coal Products; Wood Products; Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Computer & Electronic Products; Primary Metals; and Chemical Products.

Each of the report’s key metrics saw declines in April.

New orders, which are commonly referred to as the engine that drives manufacturing, saw a steep 15.1% decline, to 27.1 after a 7.6% decline, to 42.2, in March. This marks the third straight month of declines and is the lowest reading for new orders since December 2008’s 25.9. ISM said that two industries—Food, Beverage & Tobacco products and Paper Products—saw growth in April, with the remaining 16 all seeing declines.

Production—at 27.1—was down 20.2%, contracting for the second straight month and is the lowest figure since numeric ISM Report On Business index records were first issued in January 1948, with the 20.2% decrease from March representing the largest one month decline going back to January 1984, when it was down 20.7%. ISM said that two manufacturing sectors—Paper Products and Food, Beverage & Tobacco products—grew in April.

Employment—at 27.5—was down 16.3% compared to March, falling for the ninth consecutive month, and is its lowest reading since June 1949’s 27.2 reading, and represents the largest one-month percentage-point decrease going back to January 1948, when ISM began keeping numeric records. ISM said that each of the top six manufacturing sectors saw employment contraction driven by the furloughs and layoffs, due to a lack of new orders, with social distancing mandates also factoring into the number.

April inventories—at 49.7—headed up 2.8%, while contracting at a slower rate for the 11th consecutive month. The report explained that inventory contraction slowed as was expected, due to supply chain disruptions and the lack of labor to convert material, with 10 manufacturing sectors reporting higher inventory readings in April.

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