Top CFOs brainstorm their effectiveness at India CFO summit in Mumbai

17 September 2008

The second day of CFO Strategies India, organised by Dubai-based Naseba, started on a high note with a presentation on challenges of being a global company by M D Ranganath, CRO & VP, Infosys Technologies, who discussed the strategies of winning in a flat world by sharing with the CFOs Infosys's experiences of dealing in a global economy. During his presentation, Ranganath discussed the different dimesions of the challenges including global workforce, global market penetration, and global compliance.

The challenge confronting today's organisation in relation to data explosion was presented by Mukesh Jain, senior general manager and head of global Business solutions from ICICI Bank, who said, "Today the timely delivery of business, critical for data analysis purposes, is a critical factor for success. We need to fuel analytic applications with comprehensive, timely data in order to drive revenue growth, identify risks, and trends and improve products and services, grow market share and enhance customer loyalty."

Citing the example of ICICI, Jain explained how ICICI is taming data explosion with the help of Sybase solutions. Taking the discussion further Sunil Jose, managing director, Sybase India and sub-continent said, "Organisations need to grow by seeking the unfamiliar. More than a decade into internet era, we work in an increasingly unwired enterprise and in an increasingly mobile economy. Enterprises need to focus on solutions to extend enterprise systems to remote wireless device - the forerunner to today's unwired strategy.

Moving from technology to strategic management, the session also had an interesting panel discussion discussing the value CFO can add to the integration or acquisition process. One of the panelists, Saumen Chakraborty, president, CFO and global chief of IT / business process excellence at Dr Reddy's Laboratories said that after an acquisition, the CFO has to analyse the financial and cultural fit of the organisation. "The most critical part is to appoint managers in each vertical to bridge the gap between the work culture of both the organisations.

Going further Essel Group president and group CFO Sanjay Jain added that managers in marketing, operating and financial teams have to be appointed immediately to deliver results in the merged or acquired entity.

The afternoon session started with a presentation from Saumen Chakraborty, president, CFO and global chief of IT / business process excellence, highlighted the role of the CFO in integrating people, process and information. He added that while a CFO works towards driving value creation, it has to keep into consideration the value creation for shareholders, employees, its market it operates in, its suppliers and the society it operates in.