Strategic vs. Operational CFO

What is the distinction between the two CFO personalites?

The distinction between a Strategic CFO and an Operational CFO lies in how they allocate their time, prioritize tasks, and manage their teams. While the Strategic CFO shapes long-term strategy, guides investments, and influences business decisions, the Operational CFO focuses on maintaining financial stability and ensuring day-to-day operations run smoothly.

barcharts with glasses and pen

Resources & Systems

The focus of the operational CFO

An Operational CFO ensures the implementation of efficient and effective financial processes, facilitating the timely preparation and delivery of accurate financial reports suitable for presentation to key stakeholders.

The Operational CFO assumes the responsibilities traditionally associated with roles such as Bookkeeper, Staff Accountant, and Controller, integrating these functions to ensure cohesive financial management.

Services

  • Design and Maintaining a Chart of Accounts (Income Statment, Balance Sheet, Stmt. of Cash Flows)
  • Prioritizing and Posting Transactions
  • Planning Depreciation & Amortization Schedules
  • Reconciliation of Bank Accounts (e.g., checking, savings, credit cards, loans)
    • Accounts payable (entry, bill paying)
    • Accounts receivable (entry, invoicing, deposits, collection)
  • Asset and Inventory management
  • General ledger
  • Payroll Processing
  • Financial Statement Compilations
    • Have you never created financial statements from your accounting data but suddenly need them? Let us help.
The strategic CFO uses their vantage point to look beyond the immediate cliffs—charting new routes for growth, capitalizing on shifting winds, and avoiding the dangers of stagnation.
With each altitude gained, the strategic CFO steps further from the operations of the valley below, their view of the organization broadening like the desert that unfolds below a mountaintop.

Priorities

Strategic Finance

In today’s dynamic business environment, the Strategic CFO transcends the role of financial gatekeeper to become a trusted strategic partner, driving value and delivering impactful results.

As your Strategic CFO, we prioritize the integration of financial acumen with strategic leadership to address complex challenges and capitalize on external opportunities. This role encompasses evaluating tradeoffs in financial decision-making, implementing academically value-based frameworks, and aligning actions with measurable outcomes that create long-term growth.

The Strategic CFO energizes teams, strengthens organizational capabilities, and fosters collaboration with key stakeholders. This approach ensures decisions are informed by financial metrics yet expansive in scope, enabling the execution of goals that elevate your business to new heights.

As your Strategic CFO, we focus on developing, assessing, and executing strategic initiatives that align with your business’s unique objectives and competitive landscape.

Far from being a mere gatekeeper of budgets, the strategic CFO is a business leader focused on creating long-term value. This role involves developing and executing strategic plans that drive growth and return on capital, empowering teams across the organization, and fostering collaboration between financial and creative functions.

That means CFOs should help create the strategic plan that’s going to achieve the corporate goals of growth and return on capital—and then help make it happen. How do you do that? With good people. A great team of people can make almost anything work.

The Value-Adding CFO: An Interview with Disney’s Gary Wilson by Geraldine E. Willigan
January–February 1990 issue of Harvard Business Review.

A strategic CFO is not just focused on accounting and controls; they are a key player in shaping the company’s direction, making high-level decisions that influence the organization’s future success. This shift from operator to strategist requires strong delegation, a focus on long-term goals, and the ability to align financial strategy with broader business priorities, such as margin expansion: reducing overall costs and supporting the CEO in identifying value creation in addition to enhancing the return on equity through the use of leverage.

Reaching the summit is like realizing a higher exit multiple—an achievement earned through calculated steps, perseverance, and a clear vision of the peak, where the view of opportunity is expansive and the rewards are in full view

As a strategist CFO one actively participates in shaping the company’s long-term vision, leveraging financial insights to drive growth and competitive advantage. They contribute by exploring market opportunities, evaluating investment risks, and aligning financial strategies with broader business goals.

Here are three takeaways:

  • Time Allocation and Role Prioritization:
    • Strategic CFO: To truly become a strategic partner, the CFO must spend significant time on high-impact areas like M&A, capital structure, and transforming business models. However, CFOs often struggle to allocate enough time to these tasks due to the persistent demands of operational roles.
    • Operational CFO: The operational CFO is often consumed by urgent tasks like financial reporting, compliance, and managing day-to-day operations, ensuring transactions are posted, cash is collected. These roles are essential for business continuity but can limit the CFO’s ability to engage in strategic decision-making, thus necessitating strong delegation and a strategic approach to time management.
  • Leadership, Building the Right Team for Strategic Impact:
    • The Strategic CFO needs to surround themselves with a capable finance team that can manage the operational aspects of the role, freeing up time to focus on strategic goals. This includes defining the organization’s structure to align with future needs, delegating operational responsibilities, and building a talent pipeline. By doing so, the CFO can shift from managing daily operations to influencing the company’s strategic direction.
    • Operational CFO: For an operational CFO to become more strategic, they must build a strong bench of trusted professionals to handle finance functions effectively. A key part of this process is identifying and nurturing talent that can take over routine responsibilities, allowing the CFO to focus on higher-level decision-making and strategic initiatives.

Building at scale

This Strategic CFO service offering has a multi-faceted focus of profesionalizing the existing finance, accounting and controlling team and/or resources. Ensuring redundancy, and documentation and resilience of the internal accounting systems and processes is essential to allow the the strategic CFO to focus on externalities including market positioning, exit strategies, benchmarking and theoretical framework implementations such as OKRs, Porters 5 Forces (or six!, An important extension to Porter’s work came from Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff of Yale School of Management in the mid-1990s. Using game theory, they added the concept of complementors, also called “the 6th force”, to try to explain the reasoning behind strategic alliances.).

A Partner in Strategy: The strategic CFO collaborates closely with the CEO and other key business leaders to develop and implement the company’s strategic direction. This includes guiding decisions related to mergers and acquisitions, capital structure, and overall business growth.