It’s the centennial year for Edlong Dairy Technologies, although the business evolved over the years and today it is not a very close facsimile of the one that launched in 1914 as Edward Long Chemical Company.

The CFO role and title came into being more recently than that, but finance chiefs today don’t much resemble their ancestors, either. That’s been a hot topic for a few years, but the evolution continues and accelerates before our eyes.

When Edlong CFO David Starr was asked to suggest a topic for a video interview he’d agreed to shoot at a recent CFO conference, he took only about two seconds before saying he would talk about the change dance in which he and his fellow finance chiefs are perpetually engaged.

For Starr, the most fundamental aspect of this evolution is that today’s CFOs project the future as well as document the past. “We’re projecting not only where the company is going but how long it will take to get there,” he says. “Those are the expectations that the CEO and the board have for the CFO.”