The role of the CFO: the CEO's co-driver, not a bookkeeper

The CFO as the CEO's co-driver: what does the rally metaphor really say?

The role of the CFO is to read the road while the CEO drives. Interviewed by Trends-Tendances in April 2023, Alessandro Mazzocchetti, CFO of Odoo, compared himself to a rally co-driver, with the CEO at the wheel and « the CFO beside him, saying when to brake and when it is possible to accelerate ». Three years earlier, in the same magazine (June 2020), he described himself as the architect of the company's value: the person who enables the CEO to create value, keep costs under control and decide in a business that has become complex. The two images complete each other: the architect draws the structure, the co-driver makes it hold at real speed.

Three lessons follow: the co-driver does not choose the destination, speaks continuously, and speaks in terms of decisions. The CEO sets the strategy; the finance director turns it into a costed trajectory and calls the bends early enough for the driver to pick the speed. A report delivered three weeks after closing is a note read after the bend. And every figure becomes a choice: hire or wait, invest or consolidate, cut a price or protect the margin.

What are a CFO's pace notes: forecasts, scenarios or indicators?

A CFO's pace notes are three living documents: a cash forecast, a set of scenarios and a short dashboard. In a rally, the description of the road is written before the race, then corrected during reconnaissance. In a company, the forecast plays that part: written in advance, adjusted every month with the actual figures from the ITAA-certified accountant, and checked against the opening assumptions to see which ones still hold.

These notes are useless if they stay in a spreadsheet. The co-driver reads them at the right moment, to the CEO. The method for steering an SME through uncertainty rests on that rhythm: weekly cash review, monthly indicator review, quarterly scenario review. Here is the minimum content of a Belgian SME's road book.

• A 13-week cash forecast, updated every week with actual receipts, VAT and social security payments.
• An annual budget in three scenarios (base, cautious, ambitious), assumptions written down.
• Five to eight indicators: gross margin by activity, customer payment delay, monthly break-even, order book, available cash.
• A calendar of heavy deadlines: bank repayments, wage indexation, committed investments, taxes.
• A short list of pending decisions, costed in the scenarios.

Brake or accelerate: what does a CFO as business partner actually do?

Braking means raising the alarm before cash, debt or fixed costs get out of hand; accelerating means giving a reasoned green light. The co-driver sees, weeks ahead, the month when the account drops below the comfort threshold, and turns down a loan whose instalments rest on the ambitious scenario. The green light for an investment or a hire rests on a costed scenario, a break-even point and a checkpoint.

Odoo's 2022 example shows that accelerating can mean cutting prices. According to Trends-Tendances (April 2023), the software company lowered its prices by 20 to 25% while the rest of the sector was raising theirs, on a simple reasoning: large customers, for whom the added value is greater, pay more, small ones pay less, and the inflow of new customers should offset the cut. The structure of the offer changed at the same time: no more price per user and per application, a single subscription opens every application, including those the customer had not considered, such as recruitment or web marketing.

That bet was handled as a hypothesis, not as a conviction. The CFO knew the measure would cost cash flow at first: SME invoices drop immediately, invoices of existing large accounts only change at the annual renewal, and the catch-up comes later. The hypothesis was therefore tested with the CEO, Fabien Pinckaers, on three fronts, strategic, commercial and financial, before being committed. In the first quarter of 2023, the figures were in line with the budget, meaning 50% growth, with an acceleration expected in the second half, the strongest period for the company. Costing the bet before committing, then checking quarter after quarter: that is the co-driver's job.

Why must the co-driver speak early, without breaking the momentum?

A co-driver who calls the bend too late is useless, and a co-driver who shouts at every bend is ignored. The CEO CFO relationship lives in that balance. As early as 2020, in Trends-Tendances, Odoo's CFO argued for a discreet finance function, one that avoids breaking the momentum of a growing company and works for the business rather than against it. Our reading: speaking early makes it possible to speak calmly, and speaking calmly makes it possible to be heard.

Speaking early requires staying one step ahead of needs: cash, financing, skills. The other strong idea of the 2020 interview: anticipate, always, on team training as much as on cash management. In a Belgian SME: open the bank discussion six months before the need, simulate January's wage indexation in the autumn, cost a hire before the team saturates, train the person who will run cost accounting before volume demands it. The CFO priorities for 2026, read for an SME, point the same way.

How does a CFO budget in full growth: caution or ambition?

A co-driver's budget is cautious, even when the car is fast. Trends-Tendances reported in April 2023 that Odoo had budgeted 420 million euros of billing for 2023, after 275 million in 2022 and a 2022 financial year closed at 65% growth. Set against the historical trajectory, more than 50% a year for years, that budget is deliberately conservative: Odoo's CFO says he does not like selling dreams and stands by budgets that are always cautious. Our reading: a budget you beat funds decisions, a budget you miss funds explanations.

Growing fast means being structurally behind your own organisation. That is the other observation of 2023: at that pace, the CFO spends his time upgrading the structure and the finance team, which went from one bookkeeper at the end of 2015 to about thirty people in 2023, driven by subsidiaries whose revenue keeps climbing, especially in the United States and Asia-Pacific. The same CFO also wears the hat of head of human resources, a department he had created from nothing. That combination says something: in a growing company, hiring is the first financial decision.

For a Belgian SME, the transposition comes down to four reflexes. They require neither a unicorn nor thirty finance staff, only a budget discipline that also runs through our reading of the 2026 CFO priorities when the next financial year is being prepared.

• Budget below the recent trend and treat any favourable gap as a reserve, not as a given.
• Write down the assumptions (prices, volumes, hires, payment terms) so that each one can be tested on its own.
• Review the finance organisation every year: tools, internal control, skills, before growth makes them insufficient.
• Bring finance and HR together: every hire enters the scenario before it enters the organisation chart.

What is the Odoo lesson: build finance before growth demands it?

Yes, and Odoo is the proof: its finance function was built before the size that justified it. According to Trends-Tendances (June 2020), when Alessandro Mazzocchetti met Fabien Pinckaers at the end of 2015, the company had 8 million euros of revenue and its finance consisted of one bookkeeper. He organised everything from zero: accounting training, audit, reporting tools, IFRS accounts, then an HR department that did not exist. A detail that matters for our readers: before Odoo, this CFO had run finance at Nanocyl, had worked at Carmeuse and had taken over two accounting firms with partners to advise SMEs. It is a profile that knows the mid-sized company.

The figures that followed, reported by Trends-Tendances in April 2023, illustrate what an early structure produces. More than 50% annual growth for years, billing up from 64 million in 2019 to 275 million in 2022, a headcount of 700 in 2019 and 4,000 expected by the end of 2023. All of it financed by the starting capital, 10 million, and self-financing, which makes Odoo one of the rare unicorns never to have raised its equity through a capital increase. A CFO's reading: self-financed growth is growth in which every euro invested was planned.

International expansion follows the same logic: the structure comes before the market. After Luxembourg, the United States, India, Hong Kong, Mexico and the Emirates, Odoo opened four subsidiaries in 2022 (Germany, Spain, Italy, Kenya), then Australia in 2023 and Indonesia right after. These openings reflect a change of strategy decided in early 2022: large accounts are interested in the solution, but their decision cycle and their budget have nothing in common with those of a small company, and they need geographic proximity. The difference between a finance director and a CFO plays out right there: keeping the books, or building the structure that will keep the car on the road.

Does a Belgian SME need a full-time CFO to have a co-driver?

No: the co-driver does not need to sit in the car every day, but must be there for reconnaissance and briefings. A full-time CFO costs 150,000 to 200,000 euros a year in Belgium, employer charges included, a budget few SMEs should commit. Yet keeping these pace notes usually takes a few days a month: a cash review, an indicator review, a scenario session, the preparation of a cautious budget for the next financial year.

The part-time CFO is exactly that format: an experienced finance director, a few days a month, with an adjustable commitment. This person writes and reads the pace notes, with the ITAA-certified accountant for the base figures; this part-time financial leadership offerhas its own page. Before choosing, five questions: three or more no's, and you are driving without a co-driver.

• 1. Do you know where your cash position will be in three months?
• 2. Was your last investment or hire costed in a scenario before the decision?
• 3. Has anyone ever told you no, with figures to back it up, on a project you cared about?
• 4. Do you receive five to eight indicators every month that you understand without explanation?
• 5. Did your banker receive your forecasts before asking for them?

Where do you start to get a financial co-driver?

Start with the pace notes, not with recruitment. The first actions fit in one month, with no expensive tool: a cash forecast, five indicators and a monthly meeting where those figures are discussed. The scenarios, the cautious budget and the financing plan come afterwards, once the rhythm is in place.

For an outside view on this road book, a free 30-minute QuickScan is enough to spot the missing notes. Argafin offers this online financial mini-diagnosticwith no commitment, and can then step in as a part-time CFO; for SMEs in Wallonia, the business vouchers can cover part of it. The driver stays at the wheel; the driver gains someone who reads the road.

• Build a 13-week cash forecast, updated every Monday.
• Choose five indicators and freeze them for six months, long enough to read a trend.
• Block a one-hour monthly CEO-finance meeting, pending decisions on the agenda.
• Cost the next major decision in two scenarios before settling it.