How to empower the finance team

Finance leaders are redefining their roles to help propel business growth and to meet changing stakeholder expectations.

Transformation efforts were a top priority for CFOs in 2024, according to a Gartner survey, which found that 79% of the 185 participating CFOs cited it as critical. Similar top goals included evaluating or improving the finance function’s strategy and design (78%); improving finance metrics, insights, and storytelling (76%); and leading change management efforts (74%).

Evolving the finance function is expected to continue to be top of CFOs’ minds in 2025 because engaging and empowering the finance team drives business growth.

“Traditionally, finance is seen as a very classic back-office function,” said Huiming Chen, FCMA, CGMA, CFO–Europe for Illumina, a multinational biotech company. Chen, who is based in London, was named Finance Business Leader of the Year at the ENGAGE UK & Ireland Finance Awards in October.

Chen said she wants her team to think like “mini-CFOs” — whether they are a finance leader for a country or region or for a large division or function.

“If you take on a ‘mini-CFO’ mindset, then the behaviour, decision-making, and problem-solving approaches that you are going to apply will be very different from what you use as manager, analyst, or even a senior finance manager,” she said.

Empowering the finance team involves three actions, according to Chen.

Develop mindsets

One critical initial step is encouraging team members to see their department and their own role in a proactive light.

That means asking team members to:

• Shift to a forward-looking approach. The finance function should not only summarise what has already happened but also determine how knowledge of past actions can inform better decision-making for the future. To help staff understand what is expected, Chen charts a process that goes from data, the information that is the team’s main focus; to insights, the issues and ideas that the data reveals; to decision-making, which adds value for business partners.

• Become a strategic copilot to partners in the business. To solidify their role as trusted business advisers, finance team members in a global organisation will need to develop partnerships with regional stakeholders. Such partnerships are critical for a sustainable journey towards any business goal, she said.

One way to develop a relationship with regional stakeholders is to spend time with them to understand their needs and how finance can help address them. Another is to move beyond an exclusive focus on financials and to serve as a sounding board when stakeholders are making business decisions related to key areas such as investment, pricing, and workforce planning, according to Chen.

Drive accountability

Delivering insights for decision-making is important, but some organisations stop there. The crucial next step is operationalising decisions, Chen said. Once an organisation has decided on a new initiative, pricing strategy, or other key step, a wide range of teams within the organisation must work together to make it happen successfully.

Chen’s experience suggests that accountability is critical in delivering expected business outcomes. Developing metrics to chart the progress of how company goals are implemented is an important tool for the finance team to hold all functions accountable.

“We track the KPIs, the topline growth, profitability, expenditures, cash flow, the control mechanism,” Chen said, adding that this information can identify and quantify successes and spot areas where plans have failed to advance as expected.

Manage change

Change can be difficult if team members don’t fully understand how it will work in practice, how it adds value, and what success looks like. Chen uses four steps to manage change in her teams:

• Clarify the goal. Whenever she works with a new team, Chen assesses where the team stands and develops a vision for its future. “Laying out the vision creates excitement about reaching an end goal,” she said. “If people are excited, they will have the motivation to get there.”

• Rethink time allocation. According to Chen, many finance teams devote 80% to 100% of their time to repetitive and often manual daily activities, with little opportunity to produce insights that help make decisions that add value.

  Ideally, the finance team overall should spend less than half of its time on traditional, back-office-type daily activities. It may even be possible to reduce this time by using automation or greater standardisation. At least one-third of the time should be dedicated to value-added activities. These might include go-to-market strategy development, pricing and profitability optimisation, or other key initiatives. Any remaining time should be spent on simplification. Encouraging team members to take a continual improvement approach can help identify new efficiencies within the finance function.

• Measure progress. The hard part of change happens after the initial excitement wears off and the work begins, Chen explained. Finance leaders should be prepared to periodically remind the team of the vision, evaluate progress towards the goal, and celebrate the team’s progress.

• Engage in one-on-one conversations. As team members figure out how to evolve their mindsets, tailor-made approaches for each person help them continue to prioritise their time properly and move forward. In the case of managers, personalised, one-to-one input can provide insights that can help them better manage their own teams.

A river, not a canal

A reset of mindsets and the overall function can take two to three years, according to Chen. She recommends that finance leaders should aim to maintain flexibility and seek out opportunities for innovation as part of their team’s journey.

While it would be preferable if plans could progress in a straight line, Chen noted that the route is often closer to a river than a canal, with many curves and switchbacks along the way.

— Anita Dennis is a freelance financial writer based in the US. To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Oliver Rowe at [email protected].

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