The last few years have thrust CFOs into the limelight. The pandemic’s end, the persistence of work-from-home (WFH) plus ongoing economic uncertainty have all fundamentally shifted the CFO’s job description. Beyond just managing financial operations, CFOs are emerging as key leaders in understanding and improving performance across their organizations.

By centralizing data across functions, communicating insights based on that data, and influencing a company’s culture, CFOs are in a unique position to keep their organizations pulling in the same direction. Successful CFOs are building companies that can adapt quickly and are ready for what’s next.

In my role at Battery Ventures I work closely with our portfolio companies’ CFOs and advise them in navigating the new demands and opportunities of their changing role. Here are three ways the job is evolving.

1. Data: Gathering and centralizing data to drive better financial-decision making

CFOs are the critical source of truth for financial decision-making in their organizations. With centralized operational data at their fingertips, CFOs are the obvious leaders to determine how and why to allocate budget within and across functions, and to monitor where money is best spent. Make functional data your business: review sales and marketing efficiency, customer support resolution rates, product delivery/implementation times and services team utilization.

Having near-real-time data is critical as CFOs are increasingly expected to offer insights not only about the present-state of an organization but also its future. In return, leaders should be able to turn to CFOs—sometimes dubbed Chief Future Officers—to opine on external influences; from interest rates to business cycles. The foundational first step is driving data availability, completeness, and centralization.

2. Communication: Leaning into the role of cross-functional communicator

By collecting data at the organizational level and ensuring it’s shared regularly across teams, CFOs also have a critical role in supporting cross-functional communication. Increasing organizational communication around data can be uncomfortable—but it’s also key to a company’s success.

It’s rarely the case that executives running specific corporate functions intentionally keep their data buttoned up. But it’s also unlikely that functional heads are consulting data often enough to understand trends quickly, and even less likely that they are thinking about how data from their function may relate to other parts of their organization. When it comes to redefining a strategic role, CFOs have the opportunity to do the critical work of connecting and interpreting to increase knowledge-sharing across teams.

Here point #2 relates to point #1: Data only becomes truly useful when it is communicated effectively and reviewed regularly, and when there’s a shared understanding about how one function’s data-story impacts the others. Ask functional leaders to share key metrics and dashboards regularly. Repurpose one executive meeting each month into a monthly business review and invite all functional leaders. The best CFOs are spearheading these critical conversations.

3. Culture: Advancing productivity and collaborative work practices

CFOs have also emerged as central to organizations’ pursuit of productivity and productive work culture. In the slower period of economic growth that we’ve seen since the pandemic, CFOs often find themselves in the difficult position of monitoring efficiency, reducing spending where needed or reallocating limited resources for maximum impact. These decisions can make for awkward conversations, but it helps if the entire culture commits to following the data where it leads.

While remote work has remained persistent in some industries, CFOs have become influential leaders when it comes to optimizing remote work and re-establishing in-office cultures of collaboration and excellence.

Successful CFOs capitalize on their unique vantage point

CFOs enjoy an unusually strategic vantage point within their organizations. Our best finance leaders have taken the lead on some of the most critical facets of their businesses. They’re improving data processes across the organization, sharing timely insights that promote good financial practices in the present and spearheading organizational change.

Best of all, CFOs offer their organizations greater confidence in navigating the uncertainties of the future. In the future, CFOs will play an increasingly important role in preparing for challenges ahead, while supporting organizations in leveraging new innovations and technologies, balancing near and long-term investment priorities and navigating tensions that arise around value strategy. Central to all of these functions is deliberate mastery over data, communication and culture.

If you’re a CEO or CFO leading a private software company, we’re happy to discuss these topics further and customize advice to your situation. Contact me here.