
Rupp is overseeing the creation of a dedicated data team that will be looking not just at financial data, but point-of-sale data, data from website visits, retailer inventory data, and other information. “What I’m trying to put in place is not just a tier of folks embedded within financial planning to do additional reporting on what’s going on with e-commerce,” says Rupp. “I’m building a separate structure that sits outside financial planning, so as to drive a culture of data and an understanding of that throughout the organization.”That, he says, is “Financial planning looks at certain fixed elements and by its nature doesn’t think bigger about all that can really be done with data.”
自2016年加入美國頂級自行車品牌Specialized并擔任CFO開始,Nik Rupp一直至于推動“數據文化”的建立。2018年的戰略計劃主要側重于利用數據構建穩健的電子商務運作。同時,Rupp正在監督創建專門的數據團隊,該團隊不僅關注財務數據,還包括銷售數據、網站訪問數據、零售商庫存數據和其他信息。“我要做的不僅僅是在財務計劃中嵌入一部分人做更多關于電子商務的報道。”Rupp說,“我要構建的是一個獨立的結構,來推動數據文化的建立和對整個組織的理解,它不在財務規劃之內。因為財務規劃著眼于某些固定的因素,其本質并沒有考慮到所有可以用數據開展的事情。”

For Chemours CFO Mark Newman, the priorities in 2018 will be dialing up the company’s performance.Part of that will be driving individual accountability, a keystone of the company’s transformation. “We have moved [on] from an organization that wants to get every fact and figure before making a decision,”Newman says. “We want not only crisp execution but also timely decision-making. There has been a huge emphasis on the need for speed.”
對化工巨頭Chemours的CFO Mark Newman來說,2018年的首要任務是提高公司的業績。其中一部分措施是推動個人問責制,并以此作為公司轉型的基石。“我們已經不需要在得到所有事實和數據之后才做出決定,我們需要的不僅是清晰的執行,還有及時的決策。就目前來說,速度才是最重要的。”

In her quest to widen Zillow’s 2018 margins, Philips will also be looking at R&D investments aimed at luring traffic to the company’s web and mobile platforms. Another major potential outlay on the CFO’s mind is sales force growth. “During 2017, we were a little conservative with the expansion of our sales force, so as we move into 2018 we’re evaluating [spending more on it],” Philips says. But a CFO’s focus can’t only be on spending. True to form, the finance chief points out that, along with mulling future outlays, she and her colleagues will “think about how we’re going to pay for all of that.”
美國最大的房地產網站Zillow CFO Kathleen Philips將主要關注提高公司2018年的盈利水平。為了擴大Zillow在2018年的利潤率,Philips考慮增加研發投資,吸引流量到公司的網絡和移動平臺。另一項潛在的重要支出是銷售隊伍的擴大。“2017年,在銷售隊伍的擴大方面我們有點保守,所以在進入2018年的時候,我們正在評估在這方面增加更多的支出。”但CFO要關注的重點不能只是支出,Philips和她的同事們還要一如既往地思考“如何來支付這些費用。”