From Annual Report to Shortlist: A CFO Research Workflow

Here's a repeatable workflow for turning raw public disclosure into a CFO shortlist you can stand behind — and where the time actually goes.

Step 1: Define the peer set

List the companies whose finance leaders are relevant — competitors, adjacent sectors, the right scale band. This frames everything.

Step 2: Pull the filings

For each company, the annual report is the anchor: remuneration, board committees, tenure and the financial story. This is the slow, manual step in a traditional process.

Step 3: Structure the signals

Extract compensation, career history, KPI drivers, debt profile and board influence into a comparable format. Comparability is what makes a shortlist defensible.

Step 4: Read move likelihood

Layer tenure and compensation signals to gauge who's realistically open to a change.

Step 5: Shortlist with evidence

Now the shortlist writes itself — each name backed by data, not assertion.

Compressing the timeline

Steps 2 and 3 are where days disappear. A directory that structures filings for you collapses them into minutes, so your time goes to judgement and outreach. See what's included.