CFO OF THE YEAR

    Disruptor & the Disrupted

    CFOs and their firms need to be disruption ready. Please describe briefly of a story/s where the nominee had shown adept at both responding to disruption and initiating it.
    Provide a story in no more than a one-page description of a situation where the nominee has shown great focus on changing the company, while being innovative and has engaged the people, bringing in a whole range of people from different backgrounds, different skills and diversity around the board table to help implement a change, and ultimately inspired the whole company leading to a transformative endeavor both inside and outside your corporation. A situation where the nominee has not just thought about delivering financial results but impacting beyond numbers.

    Fintech Evangelist

    For Finance Chiefs, digital disruption offers the opportunity for new business models and revenue streams. Loosely defined, the term “finance transformation” is used to describe strategic initiatives aimed at improving Finance within a company. However, it also makes the organization vulnerable to competition from new players and agile incumbents, and creates exposure to new risk. This presents an important opportunity for CFOs to step in and transform the Finance organizations by embracing a digital business model and turning the promise of data analytics into measurable performance gains.
    Please, provide specific examples of situations where the nominee has undertaken technological innovation processes with the aim to:

    • Prepare the finance function for the digital age

    • The new operating model designed to boost efficiency

    • Role of finance in value creation within the business and to improve reporting transparency;

    • Deliver data-driven insights to all business leaders in the organization

    • Provide more opportunities for the employees by optimization of the workflow for the entire team, such as reducing or eliminating routine activities and automating business processes through robotic process automation (RPA)

    • Take cybersecurity into account; regularly update the software and hardware.

    • Benefits envisaged from Finance Transformation.

    Strategy for development of the finance function

    Consider a situation where you have successfully created and organized a finance department and implemented financial controls and brought the entity on right path.
    Provide a summary in ( ) words with relevant example(s) demonstrating your strategic mapping through your best performance based on pertinent insights, critical judgement and professional attributes. The demonstrated situation should have helped CFO in developing his/her best team and have also brought remarkable success to the organization.

    Professional Experience

    Put forward a beautiful story explanation briefly, of your professional experience and the major responsibilities you have in your current job role and the immediate past. (700 Words)

    Planning and budgeting

    Describe a story(ies) where you have forecasted major changes/critical circumstances in your organization in the mid/long run and then prepared a budget considering those changes in order to attain the defined strategic goals.

    Cost Control & Management

    State examples to show how you improved financial reporting and controlling by maintaining ethical standards. Also, describe the measures/guidelines you followed to make it relevant and reliable in order to crosscheck that the financial reports are according to the specific rules and regulations and follow all basic standards.
    [Alternative Question]
    Provide a brief summary demonstrating your competency and flexibility in order to manage the controlling and reporting of financial process such that it is changeable, provide necessary information to take major decisions and can implement the required changes to achieve desired goals.

    Liquidity and risk

    Think of a situation and describe it in (750) words where you have eventually evaluated the requirement of funds to meet commitments and have ensured the availability of cash to fulfill those requirements at the right time by correlating various fund sources available to the entity under specific financial conditions.
    You can also describe a situation(s) where you were able to discover your potential capabilities to address uncertain risks. You can include processes such as identification and analysis of risks, their assessment, controlling, avoidance and elimination of those risks in your description.

    Community involvement

    Put forward stories of service with the company and commitment to the community.

    Small and medium enterprises

    The CFO role in SMEs and startups could be a real challenge. SME management needs a fact-based financial perspective to support their decision making. Yet the finance function in such companies often is weak and struggles in providing strategic insight and analytics to top management. CFOs are often over-burdened by routine tasks and daily problem-solving, struggling with limited resources.
    Please, provide examples where the nominee has:

    • Enlarged the CFO role beyond reporting and financial analysis and has been a part in strategic initiatives to increase the value created for the organization;

    • Improved business decision making with smart finance initiatives

    • Added valuable skills to optimize and manage the company’s financial and business processes successfully, positively influencing company’s performance;

    • Improved overall finance function efficiency.


    * The size of the enterprises in this category is determined on the basis of the requirements of the Accountancy Act.