Financial Forum 2024, Strampelli (Illycaffè): “La sfida è bilanciamento tra crescita, profitto e cash”
(Adnkronos) - “La sfida più importante è il bilanciamento tra crescita nel lungo periodo, profitto e cash. Questo è dovuto dalla complessità del business: abbiamo molti canali e prodotti e ciò prevede un processo di decision making importante”. Così Guido Strampelli, chief financial officer di Illycaffè, in occasione del Financial Forum 2024, l'appuntamento italiano dell'innovazione nella finanza d'impresa, dedicato alla discussione sul ruolo chiave del Chief Financial Officer (Cfo) nell’implementazione delle nuove strategie di business, per favorire la trasformazione digitale e organizzativa delle imprese.
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00:00 What is the most important challenge?
00:03 The most important challenge is the balance between long-term growth, profit and cash.
00:11 This is due to the business complicity.
00:14 In companies like ours, we have many markets, many channels and products.
00:20 This obviously generates an important decision-making situation
00:24 that must be taken for investments in each market.
00:28 This includes investments in the industry, in the capex,
00:32 to supply our product to consumers.
00:35 We are talking about investment in marketing and,
00:38 not least, investment in people.
00:42 This is also exacerbated by the current situation,
00:45 which has been very infractive.
00:48 So price decisions are absolutely important,
00:51 especially for a company like ours, which is a price leader,
00:55 a premium compared to the market, which is absolutely important.
00:59 And, not least, there is always a balance to be struck
01:03 between the economic and the state of the property.
01:08 How are we dealing with this?
01:10 I tend to have two keywords for this answer.
01:15 The first is "capabilities" and the second is "courage".
01:19 In recent years, we have made significant upgrades,
01:22 both in terms of people and talents in our finance departments,
01:26 and in terms of processes and systems,
01:29 we have improved very significantly
01:32 the entire reporting and the company's managerial forecasting system.
01:37 This allows us to have people who no longer spend time
01:40 generating the number, but who spend time doing business partnering
01:45 with other functions and analyzing the opportunities of the number.
01:49 So, capabilities as people, processes and systems.
01:55 When you decide on an investment,
01:57 you decide on a strategy for a market, for a channel or for the company,
02:01 you need to have the courage to implement it.
02:04 Whether it is a courage as an investment,
02:07 even if this, for a short period,
02:10 can lead to negative markets,
02:13 with negative profitability and loss,
02:16 or have an impact on the company's financial position,
02:19 you need to have resilience,
02:22 resilience in moving forward if you think it is the right thing to do.
02:25 At the same time, courage also needs to be negative,
02:28 that is, if you need to make unpopular choices,
02:31 for example, rightsizing,
02:33 an investment on a reduction of people for a certain area,
02:38 of movements, or if you need to decide to disinvest
02:42 in a market or product that is not going well.
02:46 So, right investments with the courage and resilience that we need.