Armanino CFO Summit

A few weeks ago, I attended a Growth Summit for Technology CFOs put on by Armanino McKenna in Palo Alto, and I gained some interesting insights from leading technology CFOs. One of my favorite panel questions of the day was, "What is the single most important skill for a CFO to develop in the next five years?" The panelists advised:

• Leading the business, not just keeping track of it
• Being nice to your lawyers (a lawyer said this, of course)
• Developing your network, because hiring the best team-internal and external-is the single biggest favor you can do for your career
• Continuing to learn new things, particularly IT-related, because technology is an increasingly critical enabler

There was a lot of talk about the growth of cloud computing at the event, and a full house for a breakout session discussing the cloud from the CFO's perspective. The keynote speaker Bruce Felt, CFO of Success Factors, leads a $300 million cloud computing company-something that probably didn't exist (outside Salesforce) 3 or 4 years ago! Bruce set the stage for the cloud discussion by confessing that he uses SaaS for every single business application except for one, which is probably on its way out as well. He prefers being the buyer of technology, and he also believes cloud applications enable the business to grow faster and be less reliant on technologists in order to run smoothly.

• During the cloud computing panel, moderator Tom Mescall, Partner-in-Charge of Armanino McKenna's consulting department shared that most CFOs think they should at least evaluate a SaaS option in every procurement process. But on-premises vendors frequently "muddy the waters" by saying they have a cloud solution-which is typically just the same old on-premises solution in a hosted environment. The panelists agreed that most of the true SaaS applications are actually newer and based on better technology. One of the highlights from this panel was the CFOs revealing what they love most about their cloud applications. Now they can: Avoid having to rely on IT.
• Access information easily-anywhere, at any time over the web-so they can work with great talent wherever they're located.
• Afford professional-strength business applications for their growing start ups-without hardware or IT investments.
• Scale with systems rather than hiring, creating huge savings.
• Take advantage of the system infrastructure and security provided by SaaS vendors that they couldn't otherwise afford.
• Implement better, more robust processes that most small companies couldn't afford.
• Simplify data sharing with 3rd parties-less paper pushing.
• Manage a single source of data-no more reconciling spreadsheets!

The audience asked for advice on the challenges they face: how to get buy-in to move from on-premises applications to cloud, and how to get people to give up their spreadsheets. The panel recommended using ROI analysis, piloting where possible, and starting with a small investment and expanding from there. On the Excel conundrum, their advice was to look at where people are using spreadsheets, because that's the quickest way to find breakdowns in your processes.

My favorite "food for thought" from the day was Bruce Felt's answer to the question of how he became a CFO who's a strategic leader for his company: "What do you have to lose? Competitive forces will kill you before compliance forces do." Good point.