CFO Must-Reads: Week of 8/31

It’s Friday, which means another edition of CFO Must-Reads as we usher in the month of September (a.k.a. the unofficial beginning of planning and budgeting season). And in keeping with this timely theme, we’ve put together a quick-hitting list of articles to help you keep your FP&A process on track–from highlighting the value of a classic zero-based budgeting practice to a list of the top KPIs that should be on every CFO dashboard. To top it off, we’ve even broken down what it means to be a “strategic CFO,” according to current finance chiefs themselves. Consider it our way of helping you prepare for your most successful and efficient budgeting season. Happy reading!

1. Zero-based budgeting is not simply a crisis tool.

That according to Kris Timmermans, who explains how market volatility and a flurry of merger & acquisitions have combined to give the zero-based budgeting process a new edge as an ongoing and vital practice within a growing number of organizations.

2. Finance leaders have spoken.

What are the most important characteristics of strategic CFOs? We posed the question to more than 300 modern finance professionals in our most recent Adaptive Insights Indicator Survey and captured the most common responses in our new word cloud. Click the link above to visit our blog to see the top responses.

Want to weigh in on the conversation? Check out our LinkedIn discussion thread and let us know what you think are the most important characteristics of today’s most strategic CFOs!

3. Measure what matters.

Expense management. Budget ratio. Net profit margin. Should any of these three KPIs be on your CFO dashboard? Find out in this infographic by CompuData that breaks down the top 25 performance indicators that every finance chief should track.

What do you like to read as a modern finance leader? Tweet your top picks to @AdaptiveInsight, and read next Friday’s edition to see if your story made our list of CFO must-reads!