eCFO - Hardcover

PricewaterhouseCoopers Finance And Cost Management Team; Ross, Jacky; Dunleavy, John R.; Schulman, Donniel S.; Bramante, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471496421 ISBN 13: 9780471496427

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2001

Synopsis

Recognizing that traditional accounting and financial conventions may no longer provide the CFO with adequate armoury to face the challenges of the electronic environment, this work examines how CFOs must reposition themselves to operate effectively in the 21st century. Picking up where "CFO: Architect of the Corporation's Future" left off, this book provides models and techniques to help corporations prosper in the 21st century. Featuring interviews at the start of each chapter from some of the world's leading CFOs - including Clayton Daly from Procter & Gamble, Tom Meredith from Dell Computers, and John Coombe from Glaxo Wellcome - eCFO draws on their experience to address the key issues they face in the new business environment.

About this title

Review:

.."A guide to a topic no eCFO can afford to ignore..."
(Lloyd's List, 16 November 2001)

From the Author:

From the Preface

What is the future role of the chief financial officer and how is it being reshaped by e-business? These two questions are at the heart of this book. Make no mistake, dotcoms will continue to come and go but the Internet is here to stay. The initial euphoria over e-business has died and the world's leading companies are now committed to e-business strategies which make commercial sense. The huge and lasting impact of Internet technology on the CFO and finance function will only intensify. Internet capabilities will be hardwired into operations, and what finance does and how it works will never be the same.

Will finance even exist? Yes, but not as we know it today. What will change? Everything. Finance's mission, its methods, and its reach will all be redefined. Here's a glimpse of the path that lies ahead.

Transaction processing will be fully integrated into Internet traffic. All finance's current work around purchasing and payables, sales and receivables, will be seamlessly conducted via the Internet. Finance's once critical role in this arena will be minimal, focusing on oversight and maintenance.

Managing physical and even working capital will become less and less important. As CFO you'll be custodian of new and different resources intangible assets. How you value and nurture these assets will have little in common with today's accounting objectives and practices.

Finance's traditional responsibility for providing and managing accounting information will diminish. Finance departments will no longer control the bureaucracies and infrastructures that gather and guard this data.

What about decision support, or i-analytics-integrated information and intelligence - as we call it at PricewaterhouseCoopers? While decision support will be key to the CFO's evolving role, we believe that eventually a whole new industry will spring up around analytical support services, driven once again by the Internet.

In short, many of finance's well-established and familiar functions will be outsourced or automated. What then will tomorrow's CFO be doing? Presiding over a shrinking empire or staking a claim to uncharted new corporate terrain? As we envision it, the CFO's role will not be diminished but transformed into what we call the ECFO. Becoming a true strategic partner to the CEO in making forward-thinking decisions about the future of their company, the ECFO assumes an exciting new role of internal venture capitalist.

Succeeding in this new discipline will require a host of new skills: anticipating industry restructuring, proactively identifying opportunities, justifying investments based on the value they will offer as options in the future, and then creatively managing these options as a portfolio. Meeting these new demands will be rewarding and challenging.

This is the route forward, and we hope that ECFO: Sustaining Value in the New Corporation will be an invaluable road map. Our goal is to help guide your way into the future, practically and clearly. Chapter by chapter, you'll find the tools, best practices, research data, and insights you'll need to manage your new role successfully. You'll find frontline advice and real-world examples of the new business models, new valuation techniques, new systems, and new asset-building strategies that are re- shaping the finance discipline.

We want to thank all those who contributed to these pages, especially the visionary CF0s who so generously shared their ideas and experiences in their personal introductions to the chapters and in the many case studies. They include Clayton Daley of Procter & Gamble, Tom Meredith of Dell, Renato Fassbind of ABB, Warren Jenson of Amazon, John Coombe of GlaxoSmithKilne, Nick Rose of Diageo, Olli-Pekka of Nokia, Jeff Henley of Oracle Kallasvuo, Howard Smith of AIG, Tom Horton of American Airlines and Stephen Hodge of Shell.

Across PricewaterhouseCoopers, many members of our global practices also offered their expertise and support. Chief among them are Caroline Spicer, Mike Schroeck and John King (Chapter 1); Chris Huckle, Stephen Justice and Robin Lissak (Chapter 2); Likhit Wagle, Michael Duff and Yann Bonduelle (Chapter 3); Michael Mehta, Ben Kettell and Les Barnett (Chapter 4); Wouter Van Der Meer, Malcolm Anthony and Adam Borison (Chapter 5); Brian Lever and Martin Morrell (Chapter 6); David Lindop, John Message and Peter Maxted (Chapter 7); Chris Timbrell, John Granger and Mike Seltz and John Devereaux (Chapter 8); Richard Simpson, Steve Wood and Bernie Segal (Chapter 9); David Pettifer and Loulsa Gibson (Chapter 10); Jon Z. Bentley, David Knight, Richard Sandwell, David Narrow and Peter Sedgewick (Chapter 11).

Also very many thanks to the Financial Management Solutions global leadership team, especially John Blackburn, Doug Simpson and Bob Leach, for their support and encouragement throughout the writing of the book. We would also like to express gratitude to those individuals inside and outside PricewaterhouseCoopers who provided valuable writing and editing input; they include Karin Abarbanel, Linda Gatley, Barkley Murray, Sara Valente, Bill Wartman, Simon Caulkin and Janayea Howe. Special acknowledgment goes to our external advisors, including Doug Dorrat from VisionCube, Andrew Campbell from Ashridge, Amory Hall from Akasha Media, and to the team at John Wiley for their patience and professional support.

Cedric Read, Jacky Ross, Jack Dunleavy Donniel Schulman, James Bramante March 2001

About this edition

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0471496421
• ISBN 13: 9780471496427
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384