Business comes first

Often someone who works in a Business Finance role faces this classic dilemna, whether to look at Business or Finance. Are these two priorities mutually exclusive - can one have a growth mindset even when the usual interpretation of the Business Finance role is to simply look at Costs, L1 ...

However, in my current role, I often face this question - Nitin, you always look at the larger picture, you always rise above the usual myopic world view where cost comes first. My answer is always simple - If I look at Business first, I am nowhere suggesting that Cost is a secondary factory - the only limited argument here is that when Business grows, the increased scale will easily justify that additional Cost that I am overlooking for now . So basically the finance business partner here has to actually partner with business and instead of acting as an impediment to growth , enable the same. For sure, there could be checks and balances. No one loves additional cost, but there can always be a method to one's madness. You can always prepare financial models to forecast the lifetime value of the benefits that will flow from the current decision. Case in point could be a proposal from business team to set up an additional fulfilment centre within 5 kms of an existing one , because they have data to support that this will support growth in terms of a faster TAT tapping hitherto uncaptured growth . Another case could be allowing business team to go ahead with L2 instead of L1 because they have convincing evidence to support the prediction that L2 vendor will eventually do a much better job than the L1 vendor.?

One caveat that I will like to also submit here is that while you can take some leeway in determining the way you interpret your role, you will also need to ensure that you have a buy-in from the top management from the same ; ideally your approach could be well documented in form of your KRAs - logic being that at the end of the year , you cannot be told that 'listen, where you supposed to do this in the first place'.

So what's your take on the above. Would you just love to count the beans or help cultivate additional ones ??

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