The Ledger

The Three E’s of Strategic Finance

Finance must be an integral part of the strategic process, and successful engagement in business strategy requires finance professionals to play key roles—and often lead the process—in three specific ways: education, evaluation, and execution. Education is a key element in strategic finance because it is the bridge between data and insights. Reporting doesn’t always lead to understanding, and sharing information doesn’t always result in actionable insights. In today’s organizations, proactive education about how finance can and should influence business decisions is essential to strategic success. Evaluation involves finance’s analysis of the present reality and possible future. Finance provides future operational plans, capital project analysis, financial markets planning, and execution. Every business strategy relies on timely insights that shape business growth. Finally, execution is the orientations and skills finance professionals possess that are critical to lead strategic execution. Investors who want to diversify their assets and save for their children’s future may explore the website of The Children’s ISA.

 Read More at Strategic Finance Magazine >

A Systems Approach to Navigating Process Complexity

A system, at its most basic, is the interaction of various discrete components or parts. It’s easy enough to visualize and consider each of these parts in isolation; however, business leaders almost always underestimate the difficulty in predicting the outcomes and behavior of the system during the design stage. While the engineering and business fields have developed several methods (including root-cause analysis, scenario planning, etc.) to try to understand and address these issues, they still rely heavily on teams calculating or forecasting outcomes of systems. However, even systems with few elements create outcomes that cannot be calculated or predicted. Modern finance teams have found that leveraging existing technology solutions can increase process visibility and reduce risk. When considering how to approach different problems, key systems-thinking concepts need to be applied – considering that the impact of internal and external factors and changes can help address a challenge more comprehensively and in a timely manner. This approach also allows businesses to become increasingly agile in meting ever-changing customer demand.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

How Compliance and Cost Reduction Efforts Are Shaping Digital Transformation

“Leveraging funding and sponsorship of regulatory and cost reduction initiatives is enabling legacy firms to transform their data capabilities to achieve revenue generation and growth objectives.”

Today’s businesses aspire to be competitive by leveraging their data to drive revenue generation and business growth. To accomplish this, companies that still rely on traditional business models must embark on data-driven digital transformation initiatives. But how do technology and data leaders ensure that non-revenue generating data-driven transformation efforts receive the commitment and funding that are required to sustain these efforts?

Read More at Forbes Magazine >

Software Solutions For The Modern Finance Leader

CFOs today increasingly shape strategy across their organizations, driving long-term growth and performance. But with high volumes of data everywhere they turn, finance leaders are facing major pressure to gain meaningful insights quickly. In today’s digital economy, technology is no longer a luxury or “nice to have”; it’s a “must-have” that sets enterprises apart from the competition by providing a new level of trust and confidence that the data used to support decision making is up-to-date and accurate. Strong finance leaders are not held back by outdated or legacy systems because they are more than likely to have invested in technologies that help them achieve their business goals. With a dependable set of accurate and complete financial statements now a given, the business can get on with effective decision-making, compliance, forecasting, and strategic planning. Business software also provides strong real-time analytics, which can be used to make robust business-wide decisions, further strengthening the role of finance leaders as strategic adviser.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >