TITLE : ECFO: SUSTAINING VALUE IN THE NEW CORPORATION.

What is the future role of the chief financial officer and how is it being reshaped by e-business? These two questions are at the heart of this book. Make no mistake, dotcoms will continue to come and go but the Internet is here to stay. The initial euphoria over e-business has died and the world's leading companies are now committed to e-business strategies which make commercial sense. The huge and lasting impact of Internet technology on the CFO and finance function will only intensify. Internet capabilities will be hardwired into operations, and what finance does and how it works will never be the same.

Will finance even exist? Yes, but not as we know it today. What will change? Everything. Finance's mission, its methods, and its reach will all be redefined. Here's a glimpse of the path that lies ahead.

Transaction processing will be fully integrated into Internet traffic. All finance's current work around purchasing and payables, sales and receivables, will be seamlessly conducted via the Internet. Finance's once critical role in this arena will be minimal, focusing on oversight and maintenance.

Managing physical and even working capital will become less and less important. As CFO you'll be custodian of new and different resources-intangible assets. How you value and nurture these assets will have little in common with today's accounting objectives and practices.

Finance's traditional responsibility for providing and managing accounting information will diminish. Finance departments will no longer control the bureaucracies and infrastructures that gather and guard this data.

What about decision support, or -analytics-integrated information and intelligence-as we call it at PricewaterhouseCoopers? While decision support will be key to the CFO's evolving role' we believe that eventually a whole new industry will spring up around analytical support services, driven once again by the Internet.

In short, many of finance's well-established and familiar functions will be outsourced or automated. What then will tomorrow's CFO be doing? Presiding over a shrinking empire or staking a claim to uncharted new corporate terrain? As we envision it, the CFO's role will not be diminished but transformed into what we call the eCFO. Becoming a true strategic partner to the CEO in making forward-thinkifig decisions about the future of their company, the eCFO assumes an exciting new role of internal venture capitalist.

Succeeding in this new discipline will require a host of new skills: anticipating industry restructuring, proactively identifying opportunities, justifying investments based on the value they will offer as options in the future, and then creatively managing these options as a portfolio. Meeting these new demands will be rewarding and challenging.

This is the route forward, and we hope that eCFO: Sustaining Value in the New Corporation will be an invaluable road map. Our goal is to help guide your way into the future, practically and clearly. Chapter by chapter, you'll find the tools, best practices, research data, and insights you'll need to manage your new role successfully. You'll find frontline advice and real-world examples of the new business models, new valuation techniques, new systems, and new asset-building strategies that are reshaping the finance discipline.