Dear CFOs, Your Time to Deliver Value is Now

Cheers to 2023!

This is the time of fresh beginnings and new resolve. And it is also the time for you, the CFO, to embrace the importance of your role to lead your company through these uncertain economic times that are before us. This is your opportunity to reflect on the past and reevaluate your priorities, objectives, and strategies—personally and professionally. The decisions that you will make are essential to your organization's success over the coming months.

Invest in Value

With technology making it easier for companies to offer high-quality products and services, companies will ultimately have to compete on value. And these shouldn't be the vague promises and generalizations of times gone by. Today, value should be quantified and tailored to your company's unique needs. Every digital solution you invest in should be able to provide specific metrics of how it will improve your business. Accept nothing less. 

As a CFO looking to use SaaS solutions and digital transformation to enhance your bottom line, you'll need to build a closer relationship with your organization's CIO—one that's both business-centric and collegial. Collaboration comes much more quickly when you trust your CIO and vice versa. A recent Gartner blog found that solid CFO-CIO partnerships are 51% more likely to find funding for digital initiatives and 18% more likely to achieve the intended business outcome.

Differentiation in a Spending Constrained World

We've already seen how the economic fluctuations of 2022 have impacted consumer behavior. We anticipate even more instability in 2023. Many organizations will tighten their belts as they wait for the long-overdue recession to finally land. Yet, even as companies pull back on spending, we must be continuously vigilant in searching for business tools that deliver real competitive advantage. You want solutions that can "show you the money" through actual performance data.

When fear is based on uncertainty, numbers are the cure. Jackie Wiles at Gartner recommends establishing quantifiable benchmarks, translating those numbers into business impact, then discussing the pros and cons of the solution with data-driven clarity. It's all about KPIs that link the tools and solutions you invest into measurable business impact. 

Look at the Big Picture

As much as revenue and expenses are top of mind in financially challenging times, in 2023, we will see an increasing emphasis on more intangible factors relating to products' sustainability and social impact. In addition to bottom-line impact, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) value should also be brought into purchase decisions. Pushing your providers to quantify these value metrics will be vital to delivering on the broadest stakeholder expectations. FutureCFO found that many organizations are already building out their ESG strategy, following the paths of trailblazers like DocuSign.

As a CFO, you have the unique skill set and C-suite access to further a sustainable agenda. With oversight of the company’s financial operations, it'll be up to you to decide and invest in initiatives that fulfill the increasing demand for social value and reap the returns of a more holistic value strategy.

CFOs, you are steering business success now more than ever—this is your time to take the lead and make your mark! Stay ahead of the curve in 2023 by looking to digital initiatives to raise your organization's operational efficiency and deliver paybacks quicker. Value will be at the heart of your sustained advantage throughout this year. 

DecisionLink's mission is to help organizations scale value conversations across the organization. We understand the importance of communicating business outcomes, and we've helped hundreds of companies to:

• Articulate their value to compete over limited budget dollars
• Differentiate and quantify the benefit of their solutions from the rest of the market
• Demonstrate the business impact their solutions provide
• Ensure promises made pre-sale is delivered post-sale to secure renewals and increase expansions

To learn more about ValueCloud and how your organization can be setup for success in 2023, please contact us to speak with one of our experts. 

Want to learn more about the evolution of sales methodologies? Check out the blogs below or subscribe to our weekly newsletter to stay on top of our latest content.

1. An Open Letter to CEOs
2. An Open Letter to CROs 
3. Voices from the Field: Progressing Deals with ValueCloud