Richard Jacobitz CA and Aneesha Varghese Cowan CA work on different sides of the Tasman and in different industries, but both agree that the role of CFO has been transformed by data.

In Christchurch, Varghese Cowan is CFO at Alliance Group Limited, a NZ$2 billion agri-business that is one of New Zealand’s leading red-meat processors and exporters. Data, she says, is no longer the exclusive domain of the IT professional.

“As a CFO, data and insight are not optional extras. They are what enable you to stand alongside the CEO and help turn insight into execution,” she says.

In Queensland, Jacobitz is CFO at civil engineering company McCosker Contracting.

“If you don’t have the curiosity to be looking at developments like data and AI before they land on your table, then you are already behind the eight ball,” he says. “My guys are now doing a lot more of what used to be done by the IT team, putting it into play and running with it.”

From the back office to the boardroom

Jacobitz and Varghese Cowan have both witnessed the evolution as CFOs have become more strategic, moving up from back rooms, crunching numbers, to having a leading seat at the executive and boardroom tables.

They have partnered more with business units and combined hard business skills, often from accounting backgrounds, with a diversity of other skill sets – from shaping culture to procurement and forecasting.

At Alliance, Varghese Cowan’s role is her latest in a career as a turnaround specialist. The company was struggling with significant debt when she joined almost two years ago. Understanding data and using it to deliver actionable insights has been critical in what has been a successful turnaround strategy, paying off debt and also raising more than NZ$275 million in capital.

“As a CFO, I can only achieve success in my role if I have actionable insights and that starts with excellent quality data, which in turn requires good data warehouses and business intelligence tools,” she says.

“If you want to build a business that can pivot quickly and respond to a changing environment – which is most businesses today – you not only need strong data quality, you also need self-service reporting so people all across the business, and not just finance, can take action from the insights.

“Good data is the backbone of my role. It’s what I use to course-correct and to steer the rest of the business.”

Understanding and leveraging data, says Varghese Cowan, has “supercharged” her career.

“If I had not embraced it 15 years ago, I would have missed out on a lot,” she says. “I see accountants today who struggle with pivot tables and if they are struggling with that, they are going to have problems with everything else.”

The expanded CFO skill set

Varghese Cowan says CFOs cannot simply be accountants sitting with IFRS standards. Among their skills, they need an acute understanding of risk, have processes and policies in place to mitigate problems when they occur, and also need to understand the nuances of customer relationships, the complexities of the supply chain and how the macro-economic environment affects their businesses.

“There’s no point telling someone that sales are up or down, you need to come up with tangible actions which can help to change that dial,” says Varghese Cowan.

Beyond data, she has embraced AI tools for certain tasks and says she is saving “massive” amounts of time.

“There are safeguards here to prevent certain types of documents ever being uploaded into AI tools, but you can still use it as an effective starting point to speed up work,” she says.

Jacobitz adds that AI “is changing what technical means”.

“Ten years ago, technical was understanding the tables in the back end of the ERP, how to do basic coding and run things like Power Query,” he says. “I think the expectation that finance will build the stuff ourselves is going to become more and more prevalent.

“We know what we need to get from our data and we know how we want systems to work.”

Jacobitz cites three main skills as necessary for a modern CFO: curiosity, storytelling and an ability to work well with people.

For the first two, he says technology, data and AI are becoming increasingly critical.

“Data helps you test your assumptions and your ability to make decisions, and you can’t tell the right stories unless you have the data that tells you what is really happening in the business.”