The Ledger

Drive Business Strategy with Cost Optimization

According to Gartner’s 2018 IT Budget Benchmark for Midsize Enterprises, IT spend represents 3.5% of total business revenue.

“Rather than solely focusing on optimizing those costs, progressive CIOs rethink how technology investments can influence the other 96.5% of spending. CIOs that approach conversations about cost optimization from a strategic investment perspective are better equipped to balance critical business priorities while driving long-term cost savings.”

IT cost optimization isn’t only about cutting costs or identifying new sources of efficiency. It is also about strategic investments oriented around business objectives.

Read More at Gartner >

What Makes a Strategic CFO?

Strategic CFOs harness the power of technology to understand the “why” behind their numbers and use that information to solve complex business challenges faster. They possess the skills to manage rapidly changing technological processes, and they keep up with the ever-changing business landscape of their competitors. As innovations like AI and predictive analytics become more prevalent in finance, successful leaders must ensure their teams build a new skill set – met decision making. Modern CFOs help drive the direction and success of their organization and ensure business decisions are based on solid financial data.

Read More at Forbes Magazine >

Intelligent Technologies Are Revolutionizing Finance In Midsize Businesses

Midsize businesses across virtually every industry are actively adopting new technologies to drive better insights that support business strategy. However, recent IDC research suggests that only 50.2% of best-run midsize companies are supported by finance organizations that understand the power of data when ensuring timeliness, accuracy, and insight. Additionally, the research found that the biggest challenge for best-run midsize companies is the inability to provide timely financial insight relevant to decision makers in other departments across the enterprise. The biggest reason for this is that many finance organizations still subscribe to maintaining a growing inventory of spreadsheets, disconnected data sources, and manually created reports. To remain competitive, these businesses must be proactive about transforming their finance function with technologies that enable long-term growth.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Creating Business Advantages from Variances

Variance analysis is a crucial for business leaders to gain insights into performance while improving future planning efforts. The key to identifying variances is having access to an end-to-end view of business processes in real-time.  An organization is rarely successful when they lack the proper tools to evaluate how the business is performing and the ability to drill-down into their data to identify the root cause of variances. In today’s volatile marketplace, managers need to not only understand the variations in data, but also be able to measure business impact and make the necessary changes in a timely manner. Identifying and understanding data variations allows managers to make more powerful predictions, establish control, and improve performance while gaining a major competitive advantage.

Read More at The Harvard Business Review >