"A successful CFO is able to drive business growth - profitable and sustainable"

João Couto is Vice President of the SAP Business Unit at Microsoft. I very much appreciated talking to João about effective finance because he views the topic from three different angles: First, as a partner of Kearney he consulted many CFOs. Second, João was holding CFO positions himself, at Vodafone Portugal and then as the Commercial CFO of Vodafone Group. Third, being globally responsible for the SAP business unit at Microsoft, Finance is an internal stakeholder.

In our conversation, João shared his perspective on effective finance with me: Why Finance must be the business growth driver and how digitalization leads to faster and better decision making. And besides all finance content, João's focus on people, diversity and leadership impressed me once again.