{"id":39629,"date":"2019-09-30T15:31:12","date_gmt":"2019-09-30T15:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glg.tempsite.space\/news\/insights-decisions-and-the-role-of-the-finance-team\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T08:43:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T12:43:02","slug":"insights-decisions-and-the-role-of-the-finance-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glginsights.com\/ko\/news\/insights-decisions-and-the-role-of-the-finance-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Insights, Decisions, and the Role of the Finance Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Martijn Tel, CFO at GLG<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a great first few months as CFO of\u00a0GLG<\/a>, the global knowledge marketplace.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been a CFO at several different companies in the information services and B2B SaaS space over the years. But GLG invented its category; there\u2019s no precedent for what we\u2019re trying to do. That makes our work especially exciting. And as I settle into the job, it\u2019s got me thinking about the role the finance department plays in any pioneering company.<\/p>\n

Some people think finance\u2019s only duty is to pay the bills \u2013 or, in more technical language, to record the financial effects of business activities \u2013 but there\u2019s far more to it than that. The way I see it, finance\u2019s job is to be the single source of truth within an organization.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an old joke: if you want to be confused about what time it is, ask two people. In a decision-making scenario, you can\u2019t assume that two people are acting on the same set of information. What\u2019s obvious to one part of the business might not be to another. The finance team\u2019s job is to harmonize these differences and make sure that everyone is drawing from the same information, thus enabling data-driven decision making.<\/p>\n

In small companies, that\u2019s easy enough. It doesn\u2019t take a lot to keep 10 people who share a room on the same page. But as businesses grow, they also get more complex. It\u2019s up to the finance team to make this complexity manageable.<\/p>\n

How? By following the data wherever it leads. The day-to-day work of a business produces huge amounts of information. Our job is to dig into it like a gopher, tunneling as deep as we can to extract key insights into what drives the business. These findings, in turn, help the leaders of the business \u2013 from the CEO to a team leader \u2013 make decisions with confidence. In many ways, our team\u2019s role within GLG is analogous to what GLG does for our clients: we deliver insights that drive better decisions. That requires mutual trust, an understanding of the larger strategic context, and responsiveness as circumstances change.<\/p>\n

So paying the bills is obviously important, but it\u2019s only part of the story. A truly effective finance team can \u2013 and should \u2013 have a significant impact on the rest of the company. We partner with each part of the business, and we make sure that everyone knows exactly what time it is.<\/p>\n

What role do you think finance teams should play in a company? What\u2019s been your experience working in, or with, the finance department at your firm? Let me know in the comments.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Martijn Tel, CFO at GLG It\u2019s been a great first few months as CFO of\u00a0GLG, the global knowledge marketplace. I\u2019ve been a CFO at several different companies in the information services and B2B SaaS space over the years. But GLG invented its category; there\u2019s no precedent for what we\u2019re trying to do. That makes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":39631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[579,583],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-op-eds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glginsights.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glginsights.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glginsights.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glginsights.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glginsights.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glginsights.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glginsights.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glginsights.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glginsights.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glginsights.com\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}