Q & A: Phillip Price, CEO, Reader’s Digest

Phillip Price, CEO at Reader's Digest is participating in a panel session on the 'C-Suite Perspective on the Future of Finance' at The 11th Annual European Shared Services & Outsourcing Week . In this interview he reflects on some on some of the issues which will be covered in that session.... SSON: What is the trend towards business partnering and how will this start affecting the CFO? Phillip Price: This trend towards business partnering has been ongoing for many years now and different companies are at different stages in the evolution of this model. To be successful the CFO has to regard himself as a business person with a finance background rather than a finance person with an interest in the business. It also emphasises the importance of the role of the controller in ensuring that reporting is timely and accurate and that an appropriate control framework is in place and operating effectively. Also, the roles of the other members of the corporate team, such as tax and treasury have become further enhanced. SSON: How are you optimising the overall business performance? PP: Total connectivity with the business is essential and a clear understanding of the performance drivers, which have a focus on leading indicators rather than lagging ones. The links between aspirations in the planning, budgeting processes and detailed action plans have to be clearly established and progress monitored against them with corrective action taken in a pre-emptive way rather than in a reactive way. SSON: Can you describe the new multi-facet role of the finance director? PP: This is one of the key challenges for the modern day CFO, who has to be good at leading a talented team with the in-depth skillset required in the specified areas, dependant on the size and complexity of the business. The CFO cannot be an expert in all areas and needs a quality team to ensure that there are no gaps, while having sufficient appreciation of the issues to ensure that they are being appropriately addressed. SSON: Are greater visibility and transparency being provided for key decision-making processes? PP: Connectivity with the business and involvement at the start of the decision making process are essential. Finance needs to provide the template for decision making to ensure that they are taken with an appropriate level of analysis. Those working in finance at all levels need to move beyond a view of a single 12 month period and create more focus on the future through rolling forecasts. This enables the longer term impact of current decisions to be properly evaluated. [eventpdf] About Phillip Price Phillip Price joined Reader's Digest earlier this year as CFO, Europe where he is working on a business transformation program. A qualified accountant, Phillip has worked for a number of companies in different sectors including consumer products, electronic equipment, fiber optics and biotechnology. His experience includes establishing and managing the global finance and HR ERP and shared services initiative at Quintiles. He was also instrumental in migrating all of the operating units in the US, UK & Ireland, onto a single global instance of PeopleSoft Financials. In 2005, Phil joined Iron Mountain Europe where he launched a Finance Transformation program. In 2009 he joined Bausch + Lomb on an interim basis to implement a major restructuring of the EMEA finance team which included an 8 country BPO and the migration of 6 countries from an existing outsourced arrangement to a new provider, WNS.

Q & A: Phillip Price, CEO, Reader’s Digest

To continue reading this story get free access

Upcoming Events

From Legacy to Cloud ERP: How Victrola Transformed Finance with SAP

When AI Runs Accounts Receivable: What's Left for Shared Services?

Beyond Invoice Capture: A Practical Path to Autonomous AP

The Future of Workplace Experience: What Employees Really Want in 2026

Agentic & Applied AI Digital Week

Making GenAI Work in Enterprise Document Processing: A Live Look at ABBYY Vantage 3.0 and What’s Next

Follow Us

Latest Webinars

Powering the Future of Indirect Tax: Connected Compliance, Driven by Intelligence

Your Contracts Said One Thing. Your Invoices Say Another. Let's Fix That.

Outthink Industrial Risk: How Decision Intelligence Prevents Operational Loss

Recommended

Egypt: The Next Country North American Shared Services Should Consider IT and Bu...

How Do Sourcing Objectives and Criteria Determine the Sourcing Approach ?

The Outsourcing “Conundrum”: Securing the Benefits You Expect

EP17 The critical link between digital transformation and GBS (Global Business S...

BPO = Business Process Outcomes [not Business Process Outsourcing]

5 Ways Your Business Process Management System Could Be Failing Your Back Office

"Parts Is Parts" - The Key to Differentiating Yourself

Tech Demo: Accelerating Invoicing to Overcome Workload, Speed and Regulatory Cha...

What Will Save BPOs?

Shifting to SaaS may not eliminate the “Technical Debt”

Offshore Engineering R&D Centers Will Continue to Flourish in Current Crisis

Play Nice, Outsourcing Providers. There will be life after COVID-19

FIND CONTENT BY TYPE

SSON COMMUNITY

ADVERTISE WITH US

JOIN THE SSON COMMUNITY

Q & A: Phillip Price, CEO, Reader’s Digest

To continue reading this story get free access

Upcoming Events

Follow Us

Subscribe to our Free Newsletter

Latest Webinars

Recommended

FIND CONTENT BY TYPE

SSON COMMUNITY

ADVERTISE WITH US

JOIN THE SSON COMMUNITY