CFO focus
Novo Nordisk’s global headquarters in Bagsværd houses the company’s top management and around 1,100 employees.
31% McKinsey & Company Arise King Data 27% Deloitte 16
The number of more than 1,400 chief information officers who said their business uses a financial model to determine the success of IT investments.
Nor is data flexing its muscles in the finance space alone. On the contrary, it’s transforming business more broadly too. From providing insights into consumer behaviours to understanding the areas a company excels in, from helping reduce costs and finding practical efficiencies to predicting the future via the power of AI, data is the vanguard of enterprise today. And it’s easy to see, given the possibilities its use is opening up, why Knudsen and his fellow CFOs are so enthused by its power.
Knudsen, for his part, says using all of that data in a coherent, strategic manner will help businesses drive forward and execute their strategies
The number of CFO responders who say they have oversight of their organisations digital activity in 2021. This was more than three times higher than that of 2016.
increasing the number of functions reporting directly to Knudsen and his fellow finance directors. This is reflected by Knudsen himself, especially when it comes to his involvement in emerging areas of his business. While the traditional finance role remains critical – statutory reporting, tax returns and invoicing, for example – its optimisation has other sweeping benefits. “From a big picture point of view, it is allowing us to spend more time advising and guiding the business in terms of decision making,” Knudsen says. “Whether it’s creating transparency on unit costs in manufacturing or resource allocation and investments in R&D, the role of finance is changing because of data. Few functions are as adept in supporting the business; we’re able to use our strength in the analytical data dimension, in a versatile way, across the value chain. We’re able to connect the dots between, say, the supply chain and R&D.” Knudsen adds that this will be the strength of finance and the CFO for many years to come.
to the benefit of everyone: them, the patients, shareholders and society as well. In any case, Knudsen adds, the finance professionals of yesteryear are a thing of the past: today they have to embrace a world of capabilities that “finance school” simply doesn’t teach. That’s true, explains Knudsen, from robotics to machine learning. “Those capabilities are something you learn elsewhere,” he says, “and finance professionals will have to embrace them in a completely different manner in the years to come, compared with those of the past.” It’s clear, at any rate, that Knudsen retains the passion he had when he first joined Novo Nordisk all those years ago. And while data back then was a far-off concept, the building block of science fiction, today it’s science fact. The journey it’s taken him on, he says, has anyway been an “enjoyable” one. More to the point, Knudsen is keen to reflect on what he’s learnt over the decades. He says that if he has anything to share with the CFOs of tomorrow, he would tell them to keep relishing the ride. “The key element is personal growth, getting multiple disparate experiences,” he explains, “making sure to enjoy the life journey, not just hunt for the next promotion, but truly enjoy the journey and the career you build along the way.” The role of the today’s CFO today would be unrecognisable to their forebears in the 1970s or 1980s – and what CFOs of tomorrow might be doing in another 50 years only time will tell. For now, though, they are increasingly leading from the front, shaping their organisations and roles within them. You can have all the data, the best digitisation strategy and the very latest in technology, but without passion it means nothing, something Novo Nordisk and its CFO clearly possess in abundance. ●
Finance Director Europe /
www.ns-businesshub.com
Novo Nordisk
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