In the business world there are work and executive positions that can lead you to have a more business or entrepreneurial attitude and there are others that can rather distance you from this with the consequent risk for your personal competitiveness and employability.
But what are these positions within a business structure?
In general terms, all those that are away from the client both in the daily deal as in related to your interests and demands. And what could these be? Well, in general, the operational areas that have little contact with the end user come first: warehouses, inventories, inbound and outbound logistics, machinery operations, maintenance, cleaning, internal transportation and hauling, quality of internal or production processes. and tasks that, due to their nature, will have little contact with the most important aspects of the company: the client (which curiously is outside the business organization).
But in addition to these activities linked to company operations, there are also areas that are strategic, but who by their nature also have little contact with the client and therefore sometimes forget their existence as cornerstone of business. These are the calls advisory, support or staff areas and among them is the financial area that concerns us in this article.
Objectives of the financial professional
That's right, many times by training and then by deformation, the financial area focuses on the results of the numbers, taking care of the ROI, giving a good presentation to the financial results and seeking (with a lot of sense and opportunity) the return of capital and then the profitability for shareholders. This is not only correct, but also necessary and will be the first demand that we will make to the company's “financer.”
However, in this work he himself can lose perspective of the importance of the customer quickly and what is more, the same “financial” can go moving away little by little to be focused with the company objective: create customers (they will be the ones who will then provide profitability, which is the objective of the shareholder, but not of the company).
In this sense, in the training of any finance officer, it should always be emphasized that they must also use their analytical skills to observe the customer behavioryes, in talk to the care areas or front desk, in listening carefully to the commercial and marketing part, which are the areas most “close” to the client. This will give the person in charge of the company's finances a more holistic vision that can even allow them to anticipate changes that will affect the business's profits.
But it will also allow the financial part of the company to have a numerical perspective but steeped in the customer's needs, since it is of no use to squeeze the orange if we do not know which fruit the next juice will be made from. It is precisely this vision that turns the financial area into a business partner area and not in a simple advisory or staff area without commitment to the company's activity and only focused on the monetary result, which is only the final phase of the entire operation (after which, little can be done).
The financial profile today
Today, in a time of great and turbulent change, in an uncertain economy and in the midst of unstoppable competition, every financial professional must see himself as a business partner that goes beyond presenting results or final numerical photos, you must demonstrate to the other managers that you know about the operation and, above all, what the client asks for. Only along this path will the financial area be able to move away from the classic vision of being the one that coldly presents the results and almost mercilessly proposes where to reduce expenses and personnel.
If financiers go in that direction, we will soon see how many of them rise to management positions and CEO positions, which before they have not held much if we compare them with those who come from operations in the case of technology companies. or production or the commercial area if we see retail or service companies. It is in the hands of the financier not to be told: If you are a staff member, why are you here?.
The author of this post is Nano War, entrepreneur and business consultant specialized in strategic planning for medium and small businesses. Do you want to know more about him? Access his Facebook profile now and get to know him.
