The Evolution of the Finance Function in 2019

A shift in the finance function has occurred due to more and more businesses adopting dynamic finance analytics technologies. For finance professionals, the new model will focus less on accounting skills and more on data analysis, financial modeling, and communications expertise. That will result in a much more dynamic workforce, with analysis, interpretive skills, and data-driven insights providing it with a much deeper sense of its value. This shift, which will enable finance to play a bigger role in guiding performance and strategy across the enterprise, will project well into the future of the finance role.

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Large Businesses Still Need to Scout New Technologies

While scouting out new technologies is important, it often takes up so much time for business leaders that they end up going back to their current systems. If a company is serious about responding quickly to the ways customer behaviors are changing, the startups that are gaining momentum in its industry, and the new technologies that ought to be integrated into its offerings, there are probably dozens or hundreds of people throughout the organization who should be tuned in to those signals. Businesses that are trying to invest in understanding how the world around them is changing and how it will affect them, they must also invest in the relationships and systems that allow them to take quick action on what you find.

Read More at The Harvard Business Review >

An Agile CFO is a Successful CFO

In today’s evolving and unpredictable business environment, companies have to adapt as fast as they can to any changes coming their way. This means that CFOs must be able to adjust to new ways of working along with taking on new responsibilities. The top challenges for finance leaders are all connected to workflow: compliance requirements; doing more with the same or fewer resources; dealing with the pressure to achieve business objectives; having the resources to get work completed; and internal roadblocks or bottlenecks. In order to tackle these inefficiencies, they must first learn to be agile to ensure they can meet the demands of future-focused strategic initiatives.

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The Difference Between Good CFOs and Great CFOs

“A well-designed CFO succession plan ensures a deep bench of finance talent prepared to step into leadership roles, and frees up CFOs’ time to focus on their strategic and catalyst roles.”

When CFOs were asked by Deloitte about the legacy they wanted to leave, a majority responded that they wanted to have had a strong influence on their company’s ability to perform well in the future and to have left things better than they found them. One of the keys to achieving those goals is a well-thought-out CFO succession plan that ensures there is a bench of highly skilled finance leaders ready and able to take on new demands.

Read More at The Wall Street Journal >

The Evolution of the CFO: From Strategist to Futurist

“Digital transformation represents a new direction for businesses, but it’s also a transition for the CFO.”

As organizations face fast-moving, high-impact technological advances, it falls to finance leaders to lay the groundwork for their companies’ transformations to fully digitized business models. The drive toward digital transformation is reshaping their work along with everyone else’s. CFOs must juggle the twin challenges of keeping the existing business growing and leading its reinvention. The CFO’s part in the digital transformation represents the culmination of the role’s ongoing overhaul. Time will tell if finance chiefs are really up to the task.

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CFOs Must Focus on Data Integrity Before Analytics

After all of the changes that finance has gone through due to new technologies and digitization, it is no surprise that CFOs’ priorities are changing. The main objective they are focusing on this year is supporting the enterprise’s need for information and analytics by maintaining a competitive cost structure. Without a strong foundation of consistent data definitions and processes for how data is stored or changed, there is no guarantee of data integrity. Without data integrity, finance cannot trust the outcomes of analytics solutions, no matter how sophisticated they are. This has finance leaders asking the question, ‘How will finance teams have the time to spend analyzing all the data spit out by business units and provide options and guidance to management based on it?”

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Becoming a Strategic CFO With Real-Time Information

In the past, CFOs and accounting professionals handled the finances of an organization, and they were mainly charged with overseeing things like budget, spending, and tracking a company’s financial history. These days, however, the CFO role is being transformed into something new. More and more companies want their CFO to be the go-to person who helps shape the overall strategy of the organization, with both the company’s end goals and financial well-being in mind. To meet these new demands, both finance and accounting specialists can greatly benefit from an intelligent financial management system, delivering real-time access to information, robust reporting and analytics, and emerging technology to help drive continuous innovation.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

The Role of the CFO is Ever-Evolving

With new technologies and AI evolving the finance world, the role of the CFO is evolving along with it. These days, the position calls for a “purpose-driven” CFO. This means that the C-suite needs to understand what motivates them, and how that will benefit the overall company. This focus on responsibility is a good thing, especially for CFOs. But it also has a flip-side where the tendency is to think primarily about meeting the organization’s goals, and within that context, meeting one’s personal goals. A focus on purpose helps broaden the perspective.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Agility: The New Normal For CFOs

CFOs know that finding innovative ways to create new value requires disrupting their own business. But they also know that they have markets, customers, and revenue streams to protect, which means that maintaining controls, efficiencies, and stability within organizations are still critical. In order to accomplish this, their business must be agile because change comes even more quickly and unpredictably than ever before. Agility enables large companies to thrive on uncertainty. They can move more quickly than they have in the past, while maintaining and building on their current strengths.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >