The CFO & Marketing

CFO Perspectives

By Reg Baker, CPA PFS

The first question that might be asked is; what does a CFO know about marketing? Well the answer is really quite simple; it depends.

Some CFO’s may know a lot about marketing while others may know very little or nothing at all. But one thing is certain; CFO’s know how to measurer results. And everything that happens within an entity needs to have results; hopefully positive results.

As the old cliché goes, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”.

Every marketing initiative needs to have a stated objective that can be measured. What do you want to accomplish? When do you want to accomplish it? And how will we measure success? These basic questions need to be answered in order to determine whether the resources being used are being used wisely.

Marketing cannot be a silo and operate independently from the other managers and areas of the company. To create an effective marketing campaign there must be a team effort. The Sales department needs to provide feedback on what the customers value most and where customer service improvements can be made; operations needs to be involved to ensure what is being promised can be delivered, IT may need to design specific reports for different purposes and finance needs to monitor budgets and tract results. This Team works together, supports each other and tweaks the process as necessary. The objective is to have an effective marketing campaign that is successful in achieving the stated goals and objective; not protecting personal turf with the company. An effective CFO can contribute much to this process.

Of course some folks might not like the “measurement” idea. Who does like to be held accountable and evaluated based on achieving stated goals if they can avoid it? Especially if it has never been done before? If this is the case in your company then the time for change has come. No one can afford to be potentially wasting valuable resources (labor or cash) on projects that cannot be effectively managed and evaluated.

Summary –

A successful CFO can contribute in many ways to ensure a company is successful. The more integrated the CFO is involved with all aspects of a company’s operations the more effective they can be. The ramp up time may be different depending on the background and experience of the CFO but is certainly worth the effort.

Please contact me with your feedback at reg@regbaker.com.

I am looking forward to hearing from you or your staff with suggestions for future columns.

Reg Baker, CPS PFS
http://www.regbaker.com/