September 2020 “Tune In” for CFO Insights : FLG CFOs in the Spotlight

Join us for a 30 minute, one-on-one conversation between Managing Partner, Laureen DeBuono and FLG partner Jim Mackaness for discussion about:

“Business Intelligence and How It Informs Critical Decisions as CFOs”

Jim shares his insights about the importance of the CFOs role in leading cross-company efforts to collect and evolve Business Intelligence (BI) at a company. Drawing on his extensive experience in the C-Suite, Jim recounts examples of why CFOs must view all financial decisionmaking within a broader business context to be successful both short term  and longer term.

  • How a CFO’s perspective must embrace BI and go beyond that of a Controller or FP&A Director
  • Lessons learned: How to build a BI function and a planning frameworks – startups to enterprise
  • How a CFO can add value by instilling a business intelligence mindset and metrics throughout the enterprise
  • Leveraging business intelligence in both annual and long term strategic planning
  • Learning how to sell unpopular news using BI: how CFOs can leverage both facts and relationships for success

Meet Jim Mackaness

Jim Mackaness joined FLG in 2019, with over 20 years of experience as both a CFO and a Chief Operating Officer in both healthcare and high tech industries.  He is a strong business partner to his companies, and leverages data and business intelligence to drive data-driven innovation, growth and process improvement in his companies. As a skilled negotiator he negotiated successful exits in healthcare and high-tech industries (to Stryker Corporation and Cisco Systems, respectively) generating over $500M in value realization and lead multiple fund-raising initiatives and activities including Public Offerings, At The Market Offerings (ATMs), Private Placements and Debt Financings.  Prior to joining FLG, Jim was the CFO at Invuity, a public medical technology company acquired by Stryker Corporation, and COO and CFO at Iridex, a public medical technology company that has laser-based solution to the treatment of certain eye conditions.  On the tech side, Jim was the CFO at NextHop Technologies, which was focused on licensing network software to OEMs, and InfoGear, a software client server platform company that was acquired by CISCO. Jim began his career in London at Ernst & Young before transferring to their San Jose office. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has an honors degree in Psychology from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.