Praneel Nundkumar, group CFO for Mr Price, is a results-oriented finance leader who champions a ‘commercial CFO’ approach. He believes that finance leaders must transcend traditional roles and actively partner with CEOs to drive strategic business outcomes.
Over the past few years, Praneel has identified what he calls the rise of the commercial CFO.
“The CFO must partner with the CEO to influence commercial outcomes for the business, while driving the strategy. Being a trusted advisor to the CEO requires one to have access to the facts and data so that accurate decisions are made, and an understanding of the levers that significantly impact the business is essential,” he says.
For Praneel, this involves applying critical thinking and joining the dots between pieces of information, while drawing on experience and intuition.
This commercial approach has helped him deliver meaningful results in a short space of time. “The quick pace of change requires one to be able to make a decision with limited information and with no existing playbook in some instances. Within the first year in a new role, you’re dealing with novel situations for the first time. This requires you to decipher the key variables impacting a situation and directing your focus on those things that shift the needle,” he explains.
One of his first tasks was developing a strategy for the group finance function to support the overall business strategy. This was a collective effort, with finance leaders contributing to the vision, mission and purpose of the finance centre of excellence.
“Developing the finance strategy for a business is crucial, but is often overlooked. If you don’t cast the destination, you will never reach it, and will most likely be distracted with other projects along the way! Once the strategy is set, it also allows you to say no to non-value adding and time-consuming projects.”
“We considered our stakeholders’ needs, the present and future skills required, and our positioning in the business. We wanted to be recognised as commercial partners to the business. Ultimately, the main outcome is to positively influence the bottom-line profit growth of the business. Once we defined these core principles, it required our finance leaders to elevate their own influence in the business,” he says.
He is impressed with the calibre of the group’s finance community. “Being surrounded by smart people creates a constant loop of improvement and excellence in delivery. Our teams challenge each other respectfully and put new ideas on the table to solve business problems. By embracing doing things differently, it's not just me as the CFO trying to drive change in the business.”
