Further to my recent posts on the call for accounting professionals to offer truly strategic management accounting (SMA) – see the challenge of that demand here, and a possible solution here).

I see McKinsey is reporting – based on interviews with successful CFOs – on the increasingly strategic role that CFOs are expected to fulfil. Demands include: 

• advising on strategy

• tackling performance challenges

• championing innovations

• leading major investments

• convening cross-enterprise initiatives

… and McKinsey offers 6 tips on how CFOs can raise their game and offer truly ‘deputy-CEO’ strategic leadership. 

Notably absent from these tips is the need for their teams to have a method and tools that can do what’s needed. Something capable of capturing the behaviour and performance of all parts of the business system, as a working whole. 

How, for example, do CFOs suppose their teams could create this model for a consumer tech product launch? 

This is about 20% of the full model, covering how marketing and price drive customer adoption, word-of-mouth among owners and new customers, experience-curve cost reduction and changing margin on the product, and competitive pricing against a me-too rival.

… all in a simple visual GUI that any analyst can build and any stakeholder can easily follow.

 (Hint – it can’t be done in a spreadsheet )

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