While companies, leaders and executive recruiters are increasingly searching for strategic CFOs, it’s often unclear what that really means in practice, said Chris Sands, CFO of InvoiceCloud. Stellar financial reporting and accounting skills are still crucial for finance leaders, but increasingly, businesses are searching for CFOs on the next rung up the ladder — a finance chief that can both report the numbers and financial news, “and then tell you what needs to happen in the business, provide strategic input or direction,” Sands said.

Furthermore, while that second tier is likely the “most common definition” of what a strategic CFO is, the role is continuing to evolve. To Sands, a first tier CFO “is the person that can do both of those things and [then] go and affect the change,” he told CFO Dive in an interview.

Shaping the financial story

The need for finance leaders that can not only manage finance, but help to shape and drive strategy at their businesses has been rising steadily over the past few years, a trend that has only accelerated with the dawn of sophisticated artificial intelligence solutions that can automate routine processes. Incorporating AI into the finance function can create more space for CFOs to become more forward-looking, stepping further into that advisory role, insightsofware’s General Manager of Controllership Jennifer Warawa previously told CFO Dive.

However, CFOs looking to do so need to develop a rising host of skills that are outside of the traditional finance remit, Sands said. The skill sets necessary for finance chiefs to not only recommend, but drive strategy “really diverge from what would be kind of typical finance career, accounting career skill sets” focusing on storytelling and relationship building — a “totally different dimension of skill sets,” he said.

Sands has served as CFO for the Boston, Massachusetts-based billing and invoice software provider since May 2024. His previous roles prior to InvoiceCloud include stints as finance chief for healthcare platform IntelyCare and payments software company MineralTree, according to his LinkedIn profile. Starting his career at Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sands has also held financial planning and analysis roles at Patheon and served in various financial roles at banks including Barclays and J.P. Morgan.  

As businesses continue to hunt for strategic leaders, honing those storytelling and communication skills is becoming even more crucial. As the executives responsible for understanding the big picture, it’s critical for CFOs to be able to build rapport with the rest of the leadership team — meaning they need to move on from simply acting as stewards of the budget, Sands said.

A flat no is “the most infuriating response you can give to peers in the business, as opposed to being like, ‘Okay, I understand what you're looking for. Let's talk about what the impact on the business is, and let's talk about the trade-offs, and we can do so together with the executive team more broadly,’” Sands said of conversations between CFOs and other leaders.

“I think we are more valuable to the business when you [as a CFO] are able to build that relationship with your peers and influence the business, as opposed to just driving things by virtue of the authority that you have from the role,” he said.

Data as a means to an end

In looking to develop those essential storytelling skills, CFOs face the classic problem of “what got you here won’t get you there,” Sands said. It can be especially challenging for such leaders to learn how to translate finance to those outside of the function: “how do you take just so much data, figure out [what data] is actually relevant, and then present it in a way that's digestible for folks that don't have one, either the in depth knowledge around these topics that you do, or the context on what it all means?” he said.  

While there’s no “silver bullet” when it comes to developing those skills, it’s crucial for finance chiefs to be able to parse through that information and to create a compelling narrative. Improving their data interpretation skills is only becoming more important for finance chiefs in the AI era, when business leaders are juggling an expanding volume of data, CFO Dive previously reported. 

“The data is a means to an end, whether that's … approving the budget or supporting the strategic decision or having to check some box that the board has,” Sands said. “It's using the data to tell the story and drive the outcome that you want.”