Kirsty Godfrey-Billy, CFO at Xero. Photo / file
Kirsty Godfrey-Billy says the key to being a good CFO is not just having the data at your fingertips but being able to take the insights from it to help make strategic decisions.
The chief financial officer at Xero has played an integral part in the success of the cloud accounting software firm and is this year’s Deloitte Top 200 chief financial officer of the year winner.
Godfrey-Billy has been with Xero for nearly eight years and CFO since October 2018. She has helped the business grow its revenue strongly during that time and has overseen a smooth transition between its three CEOs.
“As CFO we also have one of the best advantages as far as being able to see across the whole entire company and so really being able to have that strategic business commercial lens across the whole company while understanding the economic backdrop of the various regions that you have your business in.
“I think that is something that is really a defining point between a good and a bad CFO. And also it comes back to emotional intelligence - having great leadership skills - I think they are also incredibly invaluable in addition to providing data-driven insights.”
Godfrey-Billy says Xero has created a lot of proud moments for her.
“We’ve had a lot of things to cope with over the last 12 months, it is a company which goes through tremendous change all the time.
“We are very fast growing from a revenue perspective we are going into new regions, we’re going into new products we’ve had to deal with managing the changes in market conditions as of late where there’s been that change of balance between revenue and profit.”
Godfrey-Billy says the role of the CFO has also changed in recent years as the profession has evolved.
“It really is no longer around providing financial and operating reporting if you like but really becoming that strategic business adviser to the CEO and the leadership team.
“It’s really important for me to have my finance business partners out across the business really helping maximise the value of Xero in a sustainable way. Being able to balance growth and profitability has been something that’s been exciting to really work on over the last 18 months or so and then just making sure the team are providing data insights not just the data.”
She says Xero’s values also align with her own.
“One of the biggest things about Xero is that it wants and requires you to be absolutely 100 per cent authentic to allow you to bring your best self to work. To be happy in a business your own personal values have to align with the company values and that’s also an important part of what has kept me at Xero for so many years.”
Asked ahead of the announcement what winning the award would mean to her Godfrey-Billy said it would be an amazing honour.
“It wouldn’t be a reflection of just me but my finance team and also the broader Xero team. I’m so proud of Xero. I see it as a truly iconic company and one that New Zealand should be incredibly proud of.”
Judge Jonathan Mason said Godfrey-Billy’s ability to lead the strategy, finance, and tax teams to successfully manage growth in multiple international markets, contributing to Xero being Deloitte’s most successful company measured by market capitalisation is why she stood out.
Mark Fleming has worked at Beca for nearly 25 years and has been CFO since April 2016.
Fleming says employee ownership is at the centre of Beca’s culture and one of his proudest moments is the development of its ownership scheme over the years.
“One of the principles of the scheme is merit over means.”
That means employees are enabled to own shares based on merit rather than just those who can afford to buy them.
He said the scale of the scheme had grown a lot as had the business.
“When I started 25 years ago the turnover was around $79 million, the turnover is now 10 times that at $790m.”
Fleming said he had undertaken a reset of the ownership scheme in the last year which had gone well, moving 530 employee borrowers from an old scheme which was supported by Westpac to a new scheme that had diversified funding and was funded by more than one bank.
The transition of the ownership of the business from one generation was important and the new scheme was a more attractive proposition for employees, he said.
But not everything had been plain sailing.
Fleming said the Covid years were a particularly challenging time professionally although they were also satisfying in terms of managing through a period of significant uncertainty.
He said the challenge was to maintain confidence, set direction and get the business back to basics.
That really depended on the Beca culture - the ownership mentality to see it through. “Working with the exec team, clients, suppliers and bankers - that was a big challenge but turned into a great experience in the end.”
Looking forward he said there was massive digital transformation occurring across the industry.
“We are trading off our current performance against future performance here. Looking after what feeds us today relative to what the business looks like in the future.”
He said the company was still working through that with forays into AI and other technologies that managed energy use in buildings. It was having to turn its mind from services to products.
“And that’s quite a challenge in terms of mindset and investment too.”
Fleming said a good CFO helped with setting the direction of a business and the prioritisation of resources that went with that.
“I think a good CFO is growth-oriented. That’s not just looking after the hygiene factors, compliance and the like...but that extra dimension around growth orientation.”
He said maintaining relationships and building confidence was also vital as well as strategy.
“Being prepared to provide constructive challenge to strategy to really drive into the strength of the business case, or the idea or direction so that at the end of the day you get a better outcome.”
Mike Roan has been with Meridian for nearly 16 years and has been CFO since April 2019.
Roan said it was a surprise to be named a finalist in the Deloitte awards.
When he stepped into the CFO’s role the company and the industry had been in a bit of a holding pattern.
“We had seven or eight years as an industry where there wasn’t that much going on other than delivering electricity and keeping the lights on.
“Most were focused on improving their efficiency - bringing IT in to automate things, slimming down the activity.”
Roan said Meridian had trimmed back its development activities massively over that period and just focused on efficiency of operations. He stepped into the CFO role in early 2019 and the first thing that was obvious to him was that time was done.
“We have gone from this period of reasonable calm to one where we have to drive economic-wide decarbonisation and to do that we need to invest in a whole lot of assets.”
That meant having to rebuild its development team.
“And then you have got to look at your balance sheet and say rather than optimise the business for efficiency we need to refocus the balance sheet so we can support growth.
“We had to build a completely new team and get investors and the board to have confidence that that was the right strategic direction, so there was a massive change in the strategy of the business that just happened to come about when I stepped into the CFO role.”
Roan admits he has loved repositioning the business and looking at what it can deliver for the future. He oversaw selling the Australian business.
Roan says a good CFO provides confidence in the direction of the company to all its stakeholders.
“It’s not just for those that invest, it’s for customers and stakeholders.”
He says a CFO lets people in the business know they are doing a good job at creating that value and how the activities they are undertaking need to change to fit with where the future is headed.
“I frame it as confidence in direction.”
Roan says CFOs are also there to remind people that they are investing other people’s money.
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