Strategic Minded CFOs in a Post Covid-19 Work Environment
As states across the US slowly reopen their economies businesses weigh the decision to return to work in a post pandemic environment. The return to the office and the new norm requires a strategic minded CFO. The biggest challenges for CFOs transitioning out of the office to a work from home environment were remotely managing the company balance sheet without cloud based financial reporting, managing and connecting with remote teams, and the immediate need for strategic planning to continually address the challenges of the pandemic and its affects on their organization.
After almost three months of the new norm, working from home, now CFOs must adjust their thinking and prepare for managing their business financials in a post Covid-19 world. In an interview with Tom Hood on the Sage Advice podcast, Tom addressed some of the concerns of CFOs during this transition and his expectations for the new normal for the American workforce. Below are some notes from that interview that can be found here.
Cloud based business and financial solutions alongside remote workforces are the new norm. Social distancing and the need to work remotely forced companies into a critical need for cloud based officing and automated processes. Companies that debated moving to the cloud previously were faced with the expedited need to transition their teams and processes as quickly as possible. Now that teams have made that transition, they won’t abandon those solutions and processes with the ability to return to the office. Some may not even return to the office at all. Hood argues the office environment will most likely be changed permanently due to the successes of remote officing. Remote workforces allow for overhead savings and flexibility for employees that cannot be ignored in a post Covid world.
Hood also argued that the role of the CFO has now permanently shifted. CFOs can no longer be just the “numbers guy”. The challenges of Covid-19 prove that CFOs must operate strategically and be able to not only manage the day to day financial operations of a business but also forecast for struggles and provide long-term advising. Transitioning to automated and cloud based daily processes allows CFOs the capacity to refocuses their efforts for strategic planning.
The business landscape for every office will be different after Covid-19. CFOs have to move forward, not back, with the changes they made to accommodate a remote workforce. Organizations that embraced business solutions on the Cloud and automating processes should not turn away from them as business “returns to normal”. And most importantly, CFOs must take on the new role of strategic thinker to plan for challenges to their business norm, like the challenges posed by Covid-19. MicroAccounting has the tools that CFOs need to keep business running, including Cloud based solutions that support a remote workforce. For more information give us a call at 855-876-3773 or email us at [email protected].
