After spending several times, In my years leading the fintech division of Silicon Valley Bank and now as North America CEO of Liquidity Group, I've often come across several tools that growth-stage startups should employ to get the job done. His CFO role at a growth-stage startup extends beyond traditional financial management. There is a need to accurately and effectively create workflows that reduce a company's workload without compromising quality. In fact, in many industries, including fintech, modernizing the CFO's technology stack has become a prerequisite for success.
A smart, modern CFO's technology stack should include proven methodologies and employ innovative tools. These tools should streamline financial tasks and support data-driven decision making. This stack includes advanced solutions for financial planning and risk management, expense management, and capital table management.
go out with the old one
As your business grows and matures, your financial infrastructure becomes more complex and you need advanced tools to efficiently manage your financial operations.
“A good sign that a CFO’s stack needs updating is if the team is performing repetitive manual tasks or spending more time collecting data than extracting insights.” said Rose Punkunus, CEO of Sudozi and former CFO of Uber. .
Remember that many common technologies that we all loved years or even decades ago are no longer useful today. The following should be avoided:
- Manual data entry: The rise of optical character recognition (OCR), voice, and even AI-based content ingestion has made manual data entry a thing of the past. Please stamp it if you see it.
- Legacy system: Outdated financial software that doesn’t support API integration can hinder growth and scalability. Audit your current systems and find what's no longer working.
- Paper-based invoicing: Not only is it not environmentally friendly, it can be inefficient and error-prone. If there is paper anywhere in the compliance chain, get rid of it.
- Orphan financial tools: Tools that don't provide integration between software can create data silos, making integrated financial reporting difficult.
[A CFO’s tech stack should include] Advanced solutions for financial planning and risk management, expense management, and capital table management.
“Let’s say you’re talking about a procurement process. If your finance team is routing approver requests to different people, it might be time to automate the workflow rather than having your finance team reroute emails. “There will be,” says Punkunus. “If your data collection situation is always downloading data from one place and creating new pivot tables in Excel, see if there are any FP&A tools that can help you integrate your data sources. This allows the team to spend more time gaining insight and reforecasting.”
Financial planning and analysis
A key element of a CFO's technology stack is financial planning and analysis (FP&A) software. Solutions like adaptive planning are leading the way by enabling CFOs to generate accurate financial forecasts, analyze cash flow, and make strategic decisions based on real-time data. These tools provide actionable insights to help you identify trends, predict risks, and achieve financial stability.