As economic uncertainty continues to intensify, navigating the turbulence of the winter and finding the possibility of survival and development will necessitate a greater focus on long-term financial planning and strategic planning.
How to hand over a brilliant financial and business report card in the cold winter?
How to get the new year off to a good start?
Cai Yuru, senior vice president, CFO and secretary of the board of directors of Guomai Culture, brings you the A+ financial report card under the economic winter. When talking about the "positioning of CFO and finance", the teacher gave a definition:
As a private publishing enterprise, Guomai culture can be described as a model of "small and beautiful", established for 11 years, 100 IP authors, 500 kinds of Guomai classics, 92 million Internet users, with Han Han, Yi Zhongtian, Feng Tang and other star writers, and relying on a strong Internet product matrix, the "CBC" sales model has been created, which fundamentally solves the industry pain points of "consignment returns".
With such a company, from "breakeven" to "management to efficiency", and then to IPO, Mr. Cai said frankly that from the Big Four, as a halfway financial person, Mr. Cai was not born as a CFO!
After a short and long process of hard work, I say "long" because, in 6 years, she served as the general manager of finance but took over the work of the secretary of the board of directors, and unexpectedly took over the R&D team of 4 people (which is also the four guns that made her "self-developed ERP whole process"), went to the warehouse to take inventory, do revenue recognition, financing, IPO, management performance, and develop cultural and creative ......I say "short" because her only appeal for 6 years is to "attend all the meetings".
Of course, these works can be glimpsed in the report card of Guomai culture: from breakeven to compound growth rate of 35%, to today's 60 million!
The core force of doing these well, stems from Mr. Cai's self-created CFO positioning, CFO=Chief Founder and Owner! That is, the spirit of ownership, the overall view and mentality of the owner of the enterprise, when everyone has the company's development blueprint in their hearts, then everyone is a product manager, but the service products are different!
It is precisely because she became a monk halfway through the way that she can look at finance from different perspectives and perspectives, and is more integrated with business, that she has created a lot of Cai's playing methods, such as she mentioned that financial BP is not BP, finance is B - business! For example, the publishing industry has inventory management identities, but in fact, in more industries, financial people can find their own "industry identities".
Traditionally, it is unrealistic for the finance department, as a support service department, to come up with new products every year.
But Mr. Cai gave a different answer, she said, enterprises can be out of the results every week, every year there are surprises, provided that from the business point of view, "continuous trial and error", and allow mistakes, the value of financial people is that they can accurately summarize and analyze the cost of trial and error, than if the wheat people summarized nine ways to die, so that "mistakes" do not repeat.
In today's digital era, finance, as a natural data center for enterprises, needs to support enterprises to complete data-centric transformation.
Whether it's financialization or digitalization, in the same way, they are all means; The difference is that the core of financialization is to optimize the business by optimizing reports, while the core of digitalization is to fix the process of financialization.
1. Two-wheel drive of financialization and digitalization.
Guomai Culture can be called the "champion" of financial digitalization in the industry.
Through in-depth customization and continuous upgrading of ERP, Guomai has realized digitalization in the entire book topic selection planning, production and research, promotion, marketing, and warehouse management, and is constantly developing towards "digital intelligence". Its self-developed ERP system, the whole process is smooth and accessible, which not only ensures that digitalization is a "perpetual motion machine employee", replaces a large number of basic financial work, but also ensures that the solidified work is fast and good.
2. **Rocket plays business finance.
Guided by strategy, the financial management work is put in the front, so that the financial department can fully participate in the strategy, operation, marketing, asset management and other activities of the enterprise, and strengthen the decision-making support and value control of the whole process of operation.
When receiving the New Year gift box from a partner, Mr. Cai proposed to make a book box with a unique memory point for them. There is also a similar "The Little Prince: Pop-up Book", which brought 6,800 sets in a single account for the first time to test the waters.
3. The "Enclosure Movement" practices the construction of financial organizations and the development of talents.
For team building, Mr. Cai has his own unique opinions. As a huge asset of the company, financial organization talents need to explore everyone's value points and make career development plans for the team, that is, when the team members are in the 80 meters of the 100-meter sprint, the team leader has to plan their next 100 meters.
At the same time, in Guomai, Mr. Cai advocated that financial people do the "enclosure movement", so that more financial people can devote themselves to thinking and practice - in addition to remuneration, what aspects of work can individuals get a sense of value and identity.
It's the worst of times, and it's the best of times!
It is foreseeable that 2024 will be a difficult year, and everyone must be prepared to "share weal and woe". In addition to reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and integrating business formats, AIGC is also worth exploring for financial professionals; Of course, in difficult times, "everything revolves around value", and financial people do analysis and build models for innovative businesses, which will also help the entire business achieve twice the result with half the effort.
The above content was shared and compiled by Ms. Cai Yuru at the Gordon Financial Elite Club, welcome to continue to share the gains.