As the pace of business accelerates and the demand for insight intensifies, finance leaders are under pressure to do more than manage numbers. They must drive transformation, enable growth, and ensure that every decision supports long-term value creation. Few embody this mindset better than Alistair Roman, an international CFO with over two decades of experience across sectors like retail, energy, technology, and SaaS.
Currently based in the UK, with a career that spans South Africa and the United States, Alistair has become a trusted voice in finance transformation. We spoke with him to explore what financial efficiency means today—and how CFOs can lead organisations from transactional routines to strategic impact.
“Financial efficiency is the organisation’s ability to maximise value creation while minimising waste, ensuring that every pound spent drives strategic, operational, or financial return.”
Rethinking Financial Efficiency
For Alistair, the role of finance goes far beyond managing costs. It’s about ensuring that the company’s resources are aligned with what truly matters—strategy, innovation, and performance. Financial efficiency, he argues, must be demonstrated through tangible business outcomes: improved margins, better asset utilisation, and increased productivity, without compromising service quality.
This means moving past traditional definitions of efficiency. Rather than chasing arbitrary cuts, finance must focus on optimising spend, reallocating capital toward high-ROI initiatives, and enabling operational excellence. As Alistair puts it, “Efficiency should be purposeful, not just theoretical.”
Connecting Strategy with Structure
Achieving that purpose requires more than good intentions. Alistair stresses the need for a structured, cross-functional approach that brings together financial management, operational discipline, and strategic enablement.
“You have to connect the pillars across the organisation. That includes budgeting aligned to business priorities, process automation, technology enablement, and—critically—a culture of continuous improvement.”
He advocates for embedding financial literacy outside of finance, empowering non-financial functions to make smarter decisions and promoting a mindset of “value for money” across the enterprise.
Technology also plays a central role. Modern ERP systems, planning platforms, and automation tools not only streamline operations—they create a scalable, digital-ready foundation for growth. But transformation isn’t about tools alone. It’s about mindset.
“Finance needs to move away from being transactional-focused to value-adding in the commercial sense. That’s where the real strategic contribution begins.”
A More Agile Finance Function
One of the most pressing challenges for finance today is agility. In a volatile world, static processes and rigid annual budgets no longer serve the business. Alistair believes the solution lies in redesigning the operating model to be more collaborative, distributed, and digitally enabled.
Finance teams should adopt agile methodologies—short sprints, cross-functional squads, and iterative improvement cycles. Rolling forecasts and scenario modelling should replace fixed annual plans. And repetitive tasks should be automated, freeing up finance talent to focus on analysis, not administration.
“Businesses move fast. Finance needs to respond even faster, with insight on hand at all times.”
He also calls for self-service analytics and the upskilling of finance teams to meet the demands of data storytelling, predictive modelling, and commercial decision support.
Overcoming the Real Barriers to Change
Despite the growing urgency, many finance functions remain stuck. Legacy systems, fragmented data, manual processes, and cultural resistance often block progress. Alistair is candid about these challenges—and how to overcome them.
“You can’t support the business effectively if you’re dealing with multiple sources of the truth. There should only ever be one.”
He notes that many transformations fail because they’re treated as IT upgrades, rather than strategic shifts. Others falter due to fear—fear of automation, job loss, or simply doing things differently. To succeed, CFOs must create clarity around the vision, engage teams early, and focus on the human side of change.
“Make your team the architects of change, not the victims of it,” he advises.
Transformation With Purpose
Having led multiple transformation programs—from ERP migrations to operating model redesigns—Alistair knows what works. The most successful initiatives, he says, always start with a clear North Star: a vision of what finance should look like in three years, aligned to the company’s broader goals.
“If it’s not aligned, there’s always a risk of building efficient processes that don’t actually drive value.”
Transformation must be co-created with business stakeholders—not designed in a finance vacuum. And it must be tracked against metrics that reflect true business outcomes: faster decision-making, improved margins, better forecasting accuracy—not just activity or compliance.
Advice to CFOs: Start Small, Think Big
Alistair’s advice to fellow finance leaders is both practical and inspiring. Don’t try to boil the ocean. Focus on high-impact areas where friction is greatest—month-end processes that take too long, duplicated reports no one reads, manual reconciliations that consume valuable time. Prove value early, and scale from there.
“Focus on removing friction, not just cutting costs. Finance must earn its seat at the strategy table by delivering insight—not just numbers.”
He believes the real power of financial efficiency lies not in cost control, but in enabling better decisions, faster. And the future of finance, in his view, belongs to those who are bold enough to lead—not just manage.