CFO THOUGHT LEADER

750: Fielding Your Insight Team | Chitra Balasubramanian, CFO, CircleCI


Listen Later

Talk to, or about, CircleCI CFO Chitra Balasubramanian and you’ll hear the word “team” early and often. The phrase describes her leadership approach and to how her finance group equips colleagues with next-level business and customer insights.

Current and former colleagues will tell you how much value (and fun) she brings to any “solve team.” And Balasubramanian refers to her “insights team” when discussing her group’s FP&A activities  at CircleCI, a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform that helps developers do their work faster while ensuring high-quality code.

The key to delivering actionable business nights, Balasubramanian notes, includes creating clear problem statements and outcomes. When that clarity is wanting, Balasubramanian’s insight team clicks into exploratory mode. Once the financial analysts have gleaned what the business needs to make better decisions, it’s time to distill. “We don't want to simply relay a party bag full of information,” Balasubramanian asserts. “Our role is to deliver insights that are consumable and that immediately stimulate a productive dialogue among our stakeholders.”

That those financial analyses could influence shareholder value marks a touchstone career moment for Balasubramanian, who previously worked at RetailNext. “Finance teams have a lot of opportunities to lean in and drive the business forward,” she adds. “By looking at customer data from a finance perspective, we can glean new insights that help other business stakeholders actually improve the end-customer experience.” A focus on delivering beyond-finance insights is fitting given that Balasubramanian is the only CFO currently on the board of trustees team at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

CFO THOUGHT LEADERBy The Future of Finance is Listening

  • 4.5
  • 4.5
  • 4.5
  • 4.5
  • 4.5

4.5

117 ratings


More shows like CFO THOUGHT LEADER

View all
Accounting Best Practices with Steve Bragg by Steve Bragg

Accounting Best Practices with Steve Bragg

256 Listeners

Masters in Business by Bloomberg

Masters in Business

2,172 Listeners

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch by Harry Stebbings

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

513 Listeners

PwC's accounting podcast by PwC

PwC's accounting podcast

180 Listeners

The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors by SaaStr

The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

175 Listeners

Founders by David Senra

Founders

1,803 Listeners

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy by Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

2,294 Listeners

Workplace Champions by Brett Knowles & Jack Sweeney

Workplace Champions

30 Listeners

M&A Science by Kison Patel

M&A Science

124 Listeners

Masters of Scale by WaitWhat

Masters of Scale

3,963 Listeners

Inside the Strategy Room by McKinsey & Company

Inside the Strategy Room

173 Listeners

CFO Weekly by Personiv

CFO Weekly

42 Listeners

Business Breakdowns by Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts

Business Breakdowns

335 Listeners

Planning Aces by Brett Knowles & Jack Sweeney

Planning Aces

1 Listeners

HBR On Strategy by Harvard Business Review

HBR On Strategy

80 Listeners

HBR On Leadership by Harvard Business Review

HBR On Leadership

142 Listeners

Moneywise by Hampton

Moneywise

646 Listeners