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Senior managers seek well rounded FDs who can handle the basics

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27th Jun 2007
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So what makes the ideal finance director? Microsoft Dynamics, the software giant’s business applications arm, asked that question to 50 managing directors and 30 recruitment professionals, and got an unsurprisingly comprehensive answer. Alan Shipman reports.

Mr or Ms Perfect FD combines a thorough grasp of company strategy and sector trends with detailed IT and financial engineering knowledge, and has the right personality to fit easily into corporate culture while supporting decisions that periodically reshape it.

Not surprisingly, most managing directors find their FDs falling short in at least one of these areas. Those with the right backroom skills are often dazzled by the harsh light of the front office. When it comes to recruiting, MDs’ expectations are bit more realistic. Strong financial management skills are the key criterion for 80%, with 46% valuing strategic experience. Only 28% prioritise people management skills, and 26% prefer their FDs to come with detailed IT knowledge.

On the job, however, 62% say that measuring and monitoring performance is now the FD's key task – a reassuring figure for the survey sponsor, who is eager for more revenue from the business performance management (BPM) software market. But "partnering with business to drive growth" is ranked as the second priority by 42% of respondents. And while only 12% name cost reduction and process improvement as top priority, it is the top option - cited by 72% of respondents - when the top three priorities are taken together.

Surveys like these are a necessary corrective to the CFO cheerleaders who say that finance specialists are the new corporate strategists, and the software vendors who promise to channel data and crunch numbers so you can lift your sights to the bigger picture. The reality is that increased external regulation and reporting requirements - often amplified by growing internal demand for real-time data - are forcing FDs to get more immersed in compliance and data management issues, and pulling them away from the visionary role they and their superiors would like them to take on.

Of the MDs in Microsoft's survey, 54% think their last FD was too absorbed in compliance, and 46% felt that focusing on data deflected their FDs away from strategy. Four in ten respondents think the finance function should be outsourced to give their financial people more time for forming plans instead of counting beans.

Few who have risen to the top of big companies like to think of their assistants overtaking them. So while most FDs want to get to the top of the company, only 40% of MDs rate them as CEO material, most rating their financial colleagues’ technical savvy too far ahead of their people friendliness.

At least one of the survey respondents drew the parallel with Tony Blair and GordonBrown. This week, the holder of the purse strings finally gets to take the reins of the whole enterprise. If this deliverer of 11 budgets turns out to be a visionary, there’s surely hope for the rest.

Alan Shipman is the editor of FinanceWeek.co.uk, a companion site to AccountingWEB that caters for finance teams and managers in medium and large UK businesses.

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