The CFO’s Role is Changing: These Days, They Need to be Jack of all Trades

Like many other chief financial officers during the pandemic, TreviPay CFO Joel Campbell found himself spending an awful lot of his time overseeing his company’s rush to modernize its back-end technology stack to ensure it could keep doing business while the office stayed shut.

Some might argue this should fall solely on chief technology officer’s shoulders, but Campbell said he sees it differently. For a CFO to be effective, it’s important to be flexible and to know all the ins and outs of the company, up front and behind the scenes — all the more so since the pandemic arrived and slammed the brakes on office life as we knew it.

“I don’t own the tech stack, but I know enough about it to be dangerous,” he told PYMNTS in an interview, half-jokingly. “As a CFO, it’s my job to make sure I understand the tech stack that supports our product, and also that the CTO understands the tech that supports the finance, legal and other back-office functions.”

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Campbell said the sudden advent of remote work forced him to help modernize the B2B payment provider’s tech stack as quickly as possible. And while modernization looked different to other CFOs — depending on whatever it is they do and what systems they rely on — he said they faced many of the same challenges and potential pitfalls.

Any CFO has had to step back and take a hard look at every component of the tech stack they use, be it the planning system, financial reporting system, ledger or treasury system, he said. They’ve then had to make decisions on which systems were in most urgent need of modernization and which could be left alone for the time being, all while keeping a watchful eye on the limited time and resources available.

“The modern CFO has to really take a thoughtful approach to looking at their systems, looking at their people and making sure their processes are all aligned in order to be able to move forward,” he said.

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At the same time, he’s had to push hard to ensure that the changes he wanted to make were actually done. One of the challenges many CFOs face, Campbell said, is that the back office is often forced to compete with other parts of the business for tech investment.

That’s especially true at smaller and midsize companies, which are often tempted to pump most of their limited resources into sales, marketing and product to take the company forward, he said. But fighting for the right investments now can help the back office support the business wherever it’s going in the future.

Campbell said it’s a fair characterization to liken the CFO’s challenge to playing defense while the rest of the company is on offense, but he stressed that most CFOs need to maintain a careful balance between the two, ensuring an equal focus on both where the company is going and what it needs to support it as it goes there.

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Above all else, Campbell said, the modern CFO has a responsibility to help lead the company, and to do that, he or she needs to ensure they are heavily involved in all areas of the business, not just finances. He said when he first joined TreviPay, his mandate was to take hold of its financial organization and fix whatever needed to be fixed to point it in the right direction for the next 18 to 24 months. To do that, he needed to insert himself into every part of the business to understand the products and the services it provides, as well as who its customers are and how they look at the company.

“You have to be able to focus on finance, but you also have to be able to step back and make sure you’re inserted in the business,” he said. “If you can do that, it means you’re having an influence not only over the product, but also the strategic direction of the business.”