‘Interpret numbers to understand your business better’

Corporate finance professionals should don many hats since they are required to be up to date not only with accounting but with all other major functional areas of the firm they work with, according to K. Vidhya Shankar, Deputy General Manager and Company Secretary, Bimetal Bearings Ltd, Coimbatore.

They must also be able to understand data in financial terms and be able to project the firm’s future performance based on this, he added.

Speaking at a

Business Line Club meeting, sponsored by Tamilnad Mercantile Bank Ltd, Tuticorin, at the AJK Institute of Management here, Shankar said the responsibility of finance professionals is not restricted to accounting, budgeting and dealing with auditors. They must analyse data and interpret it correctly to ensure that the company is progressing towards its chosen goals. Hence, they must be ‘serious critics’ of each and every function that management carries out.

While technology has made compiling data a lot easier, a finance professional’s job does not end with this. He must be able to make significant value addition to the numbers.

This helps them better understand the nitty-gritty of the business they are dealing with, he said. R. Amuthan, Director, AJK Institute of Management, Coimbatore, and S.S. Subramanian, Branch Head of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank, Coimbatore, also spoke at the event.

>yegya.narayanan@thehindu.co.in