For the last 18 years, Gary Simon has been thinking, researching and writing about the office of the CFO. He’s grown his FSN brand alongside the LinkedIn group, ‘Modern Finance Forum’ to one of the top 5 groups for CFOs globally on LinkedIn and a platform for strong debate and dialogue for CFOs and other senior finance professionals in different industries across the globe.
You’ve been thinking about the office of the CFO for many years now, what are the biggest changes you’ve seen in the finance function as a whole?
So, my experience stretches back 42 years – I know it’s difficult to believe! In that time, I’ve seen huge amounts of change, but it’s really accelerated in the last 20 years. One thing I’ve noticed is a shift away from the general ledger as the complete source of finance information. It’s still important in terms of statutory processes, but in terms of using it to try and understand the main levers in the business – it’s just not really that helpful. Today, I see 80% of the useful data, analytics and nuggets of insight coming out of other solutions. Another big change is clearly automation which I’d expand to include hardware and software interoperability. When I started out, this was a huge issue. You couldn’t just take data from an IBM system and put it on a system from Unisys. And it wasn’t only the hardware, but also the operating systems that wouldn’t allow that integration of data. I remember carting around 10 megabytes of data on a huge disk platter the size of my desk and literally picking it up and putting it in another machine – it’s just unthinkable today. It’s been a revolution.
The third thing I’d say – which is a result of all the things I mentioned above – is this cultural change where finance has gone from being inwardly focused, where everyone had to come to finance to get the answers they wanted, to this idea of Finance as a business partner that can support the wider organization with self-service data. Finance has become much more outwardly focused and visible.
How about finance professionals themselves, what are the changes you’ve seen there?
I think it’s something that’s affected all professions, which is increased specialization. The breadth of the finance remit has significantly expanded which reduces the effectiveness of a jack-of-all trades finance professional. Now you need people specializing in tax to keep up with global changes in tax regimes, you need accountants who are learning Python or how to write AI algorithms, you need FP&A specialists to reforecast in an instant.
I think another big change is the willingness to consider other qualifications for roles within today’s finance function. For years, the gold standard was a chartered accountant or CPA, which is still an important qualification but now you might look to a math graduate, a data scientist, finance data engineers or people who have expertise in other areas of the business. You can’t be credible with business leaders in and around a large enterprise unless you have team members with an appreciation for the challenges facing that area.
We just published some research that looks at the future of recruitment in the finance function and it shows that despite all the doom and gloom that pervades Europe in particular, finance functions are expected to grow.
Responses showed 30% are going to grow in 2024/25 with 53% reporting that they expected to stay the same. That means less than a quarter expect to shrink which is very encouraging. Worth noting though that growth is not going to be in the traditional areas of financial accounting, governance and compliance. It’s going to be in those new areas of AI, data management, FP&A and analytics. The people who are going to lead the charge are the ones who have strong analytical capabilities.
I think another big change is the willingness to consider other qualifications for roles within today’s finance function. For years, the gold standard was a chartered accountant or CPA, which is still an important qualification but now you might look to a math graduate, a data scientist, finance data engineers or people who have expertise in other areas of the business.
I want to talk about your community. You’ve built the Modern Finance Forum from scratch to almost 60,000 members!
I’ll let you in on a secret. I was, and still am, very interested in art. I paint as an amateur and years ago, I joined a community called Paint Doodle. Basically, everyone would show their work and members would constructively comment to help others improve their technical skills. The community founder joined every single conversation without fail. He served as a guru and guide and was just completely passionate about it. That’s the approach I have taken in building the Modern Finance Forum. It is all encompassing, all embracing – it can take over your life! But for a community to work you must have a genuine desire to help the people within that group. Essentially, I’m there almost every day. I feel that if someone has taken the trouble to write than you must take the trouble to respond – even if you just acknowledge the comment. I’m lucky to have good moderators who help me keep up.
Unless the subject matter is in your DNA, unless you’re credible to talk about the topics at hand, unless you’re constantly bringing fresh ideas and new developments to the attention of your audience, they’re going to run away. We now have 4 million post views a year and, on average, 25,000 people coming to our community a day.
That’s incredible. What was your initial vision for the community?
We’ve really stayed true to our vision of a community for senior finance professionals – 82% of our members are in senior roles. A tone of enthusiasm and respect is set by our moderators, and we’ve never had any issues with keeping things polite and thoughtful. We’ve also brought our community together in person, with larger functions pre-covid and lately with smaller, focused dinners.
Any career highs or lows?
It’s been a fantastic ride. When I saw computers come on the scene – literally I was involved in the very, very first PCs – the Commodore Pet. I was lucky enough to work with a couple of other accountants who decided to specialize in computing. We just sat in an open plan office with a bunch of computers, surrounded by our shared computer magazines and just bounced ideas off each other and learned together. Our knowledge grew and we progressed from one machine to the next. It’s a passion. Today I coach and mentor people to become fellows for the British Computer Society. When you are in a field that is changing every day, it’s easy to get up excited,to want to work on the next thing – there’s never a boring moment. You just try and keep up!
Honestly, there have been no real lows, just opportunities to learn, I guess. I’ve been very lucky.
What’s next for FSN and the Modern Finance Forum?
Just last month we launched FSNTalent, something I am very excited about. FSNTalent is a new approach to recruitment designed to help organizations find finance talent. Over the years, I’ve recruited hundreds of Finance people, especially in my career with Deloitte. But what spurred me on this journey was talking to a lot of CFOs in our Modern Finance Forum. They were fed up with recruitment. Often, it’s done poorly by recruiters who don’t understand finance, the business they are recruiting into or the rapidly changing role of the finance professional.
Our research actually showed that 53% of businesses are unhappy with the finance talent they end up with! That’s a pretty poor statistic but not surprising when you consider traditional recruiting agencies are increasingly using AI engines to match CVs to job specs. By taking this approach you are completely missing out on the human element and those necessary skills that may come from roles outside the finance sector.
We believe we can do this a lot better by understanding the business and the individuals we’re working with. We’re not going to be a recruitment factory. We’ve got a great community to tap into and research that is showing us where finance leaders are headed, what they need to do and what characteristics they need to become finance leaders which we can use to guide candidates and companies we’re working with. It’s an exciting next step!
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