CFO Dive: Business Forecasters See Inflation Heating Up to 5.1%

“In an estimate released after a two-day meeting on Wednesday, Fed officials forecast that so-called core inflation will rise 2.3% next year, slightly above the 2.2% estimate by the NABE panel.”

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CFO Magazine: A New Year’s Resolution: The CFO Should Own Digital Transformation

Sanjay Purohit gives 5 reasons why the CFO’s role in digital transformation (DX) is paramount:

1. Successful DX is data-fueled. 

2. DX increases risk.

3. Digitalization demands centralization.

4. Transformation has a timeline.

5. The road to process transformation runs through finance. 

Read More at CFO Magazine >

Robert Kugel on LinkedIn: Value-Based Planning Improves Corporate Performance

“Value-based planning, in my context, is an approach to corporate planning and budgeting that integrates operational planning and financial budgeting; a forward-looking exercise that incorporates “things” not just money. Things like headcount, kilowatt hours used, less-than-truckload shipments, invoices processed and so on. This is more effective because, for one, those responsible for a business unit think about their requirements and objectives mainly in terms of things they need to achieve and the things they use to achieve those objectives. Money is an abstraction of those things.”

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CFOs Take on More Roles as Business Environment Changes

“While the pandemic has reinvigorated the strategic role of the CFO, at some point, that enthusiasm will likely fade. Unless, that is, they take steps to reduce the load of repetitive tasks. Further, it’s been the conclusion of many that companies with stronger technology adoption are doing better through the crisis.”

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Give Purpose to Your Data to Drive Value

This McKinsey Digital article highlights the eight elements leadership teams should leverage to exploit their data analytics practices and make more informed, and ultimately more profitable decisions. “Performance — not pristine data sets, interesting patterns, or killer algorithms — is ultimately the point. Advanced data analytics is a means to an end. It’s a discriminating tool to identify, and then implement, a value-driving answer.”

Read more at McKinsey.com >

Leveraging Big Data

Is big data a challenge for your organization?  An article in the September 2013 edition of Software Magazine highlights 3C Software’s Matthew Smith in a discussion about business intelligence tools needed to handle the massive amounts of data that companies collect and analyze.

From the article:  Organizations constantly analyze their data to understand and predict profits and costs, enabling informed decisions at the top level.  “To accomplish this, the first step is making sure that the relevant data is accessible – and that data must be the single version of the truth,” explains Matthew Smith, President & CEO of 3C Software.

Check out the article and let us know what you think!