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Hey there,
Ever look at “external spend” and realize it is your strategy in spreadsheet form? Suppliers can account for 40 to 70% of costs, so treating contracts as tactical choices invites lock-in, duplication, and costly workarounds later.
Take a moment to see how simple governance can turn spending into leverage.
Quick Win For Your Finance Team
12-Minute Daily “Pricing Exceptions” Sweep
In 12 minutes a day, keep a tight grip on non-standard pricing and terms so margin erosion happens only when you choose it, not by accident.
Pull yesterday’s closed-won deals and any pending approvals from your CRM or CPQ tool, including fields for List Price, Final Price, Discount %, Term Length, and any custom terms or one-off concessions.
Filter for deals where Discount % is outside your “normal” band, terms are non-standard (extended payment, unusual renewal, extra services), or margin drops below your target threshold.
In a single sheet, tag each exception with three labels: Reason (Competitive, Strategic Logo, Upsell, Internal Push), Approver (who said yes), and Duration (One-Time, This Year Only, Permanent).
Highlight the top 5 exceptions by impact and add one concrete note per line: “Codify in policy,” “Require higher approval next time,” or “Treat as one-off and track.”
Share a quick screenshot of the daily exceptions with Sales Ops or RevOps and ask for a single sentence in response: “Are we comfortable repeating this pattern, or does something need to change?”
Immediate payoff:
You will see discounting creep and risky terms within a day instead of at quarter close, have cleaner conversations with sales about where flexibility makes sense, and your finance team will build a daily habit of protecting long-term pricing power without turning every deal into a fight.
📊 40–70% of Costs: Turn External Spend Into a Strategic Weapon
FTI shows how CFOs turn external spend into a lever for growth. For many enterprises, suppliers account for 40–70% of total costs, yet decisions remain tactical. The unlock is value governance, clear rules that align incentives and make strategy legible across teams, preventing 78% of lock-in traps and 3–4x contractor rebounds. See full article.
Why this matters (fast take):
📈 Board-Level Visibility: Put external spend on leadership agendas. Review concentration, term risk, and duplication quarterly, not just at budget season.
🔗 Break Legacy Lock-In: Audit multi-year contracts and sole-source vendors. Add off-ramps, pilot periods, and benchmarking rights to restore leverage and flexibility.
🤝 5 CFO Collaboration Plays That Cut Budget Surprises
Benefit News outlines five ways HR and benefits leaders can connect with their CFO and secure faster approvals. The piece emphasizes shared metrics, early finance involvement, and concise decision memos that link programs to cash, risk, and timing. That discipline speeds decisions and reduces back-and-forth during budget season. See full article.
Fast move:
📊Faster Yeses: Loop in finance before solutioning. Share a 1-page brief outlining the problem, savings, forecast impact, and risk. Ask for thresholds, not line items.
🤝Shared Scorecard: Build a simple KPI sheet: adoption, absenteeism, retention, and cost per employee. Map each program to cash, risk, and timing.
📣 New Launch Claims ROI, Buyers Want Proof
The press release announces a product rollout designed to accelerate decisions and deliver cleaner returns for enterprise teams. It highlights customer demand, leadership quotes, and a go-to-market plan spanning owned and partner channels. The hook is time savings and measurable outcomes, positioning case studies as the next test. See full article.
Fast move:
🧭 Who It Helps: Built for mid-market and enterprise buyers, with executive sponsorship and procurement alignment to speed approvals and reduce friction.
⚙️ What’s New: Bundled features into a single package, clearer pricing tiers, and a partner-assisted onboarding program to accelerate onboarding and reduce setup.
Automation Play Of The Week
Top Customer Health Pulse in Your Inbox
Automate a one-page daily view of your top customers’ revenue, margin, collections, and product health so you stop asking “How are our biggest accounts doing?” and instead start the day with risk and upside in one place. This pulse uses your existing billing, CRM, and support/product data and can be owned by finance with light help from RevOps.
Pick your “top customer” list and KPIs. Decide which 20–50 customers to track and what you want daily (e.g., MRR/ARR, gross margin %, days past due, open support tickets, recent expansions/churn, and key usage metric).
Set up daily exports. Configure billing, CRM, and support/product tools to drop simple CSVs each night (revenue and margin by customer, open AR, ticket counts, usage) into a shared folder with consistent names and customer IDs.
Build a single “Customer Health Pulse” tab. Use Excel or Google Sheets with data connections/Power Query to join those files and create one summary tab where each row is a customer, with KPIs plus a simple health flag (green/amber/red) based on rules you set.
Automate refresh and delivery. Use Power Automate, Zapier, or a scheduled macro/script to refresh the file at a set time each morning and email the summary as a PDF to you, the CEO, CRO, and CS leaders.
Benefits:
Gives you a daily, CFO-grade view of which customers drive the P&L, where cash is slow, and where churn or expansion is brewing.
Helps align finance, sales, and CS around a single list of accounts to protect and grow, rather than scattered views.
Control Check:
Once a week, have FP&A or RevOps compare the pulse to core dashboards (billing, CRM, support) for a few customers to confirm mappings, IDs, and health rules are still accurate, then tighten anything that drifts.
📊 Take This Edition’s Poll:
This-or-that, what makes a CFO say yes faster to HR or spend asks?
Why It Matters
When external spend is treated as a leadership priority, you spot concentration risk and hidden overlap before they hit the margins. Clear rules, such as off-ramps, pilots, and benchmarking rights, keep vendors honest and preserve flexibility.
The cheapest contract is often the one you can actually exit.
Until the next financial insight,
Corrine Maxwell
Editor-in-Chief
CFO Executive Insights
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