The Ledger
Curated content foranalytical business leaders
An Agile CFO is a Successful CFO
January 4, 2019
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.
Tools For An Effective Supply Chain Strategy
January 3, 2019
Today’s supply chains are increasingly complex, driving logistics operations to invest in systems that can drive efficiency rather than hindering it. Forward-thinking supply chain professionals are looking to advanced technologies to streamline processes, improve accuracy, accelerate delivery and reduce costs. Complex supply chains generate more data, which companies can use to drive greater efficiency or engage in innovation that disrupts an entire industry. The prospect of using data to operate more efficiently and/or innovate is behind the catalyst toward digital transformation that leaders across every industry now pursue.
Just in Case You Haven’t Already- Here Are 5 More Reasons to Ditch Your Spreadsheets
January 2, 2019
It is impossible to get a holistic view of a business using spreadsheets, and poor visibility creates business risk. Yet, companies still cling to them even when there are many better alternatives out there because of their familiarity of the tool. The long list of cons using spreadsheets include high maintenance overhead, significant time spent by expensive finance resources performing manual input rather than real value-add, poor data management, no data integration nor Big Data support, and sub-par system performance and deployment options. There is no need for the CFO to rely on different products and separate data warehouses. Instead, they can support their new and developing needs in a single, easy-to-use, unified platform governed by finance – optimized at using data as a strategic asset to drive a “data dividend.”
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >
New Solutions Are Necessary For Success In Chemical Manufacturing
December 27, 2018
The chemical industry is characterized by process-based manufacturing, high capital intensity, and long investment cycles. Over the longer term, capital is deployed for R&D or capacity expansion, while, over the shorter term, resources are targeted to increase productivity and reduce costs. This process has kept the industry stable because their conservative response to change was sufficient. Over the last several decades, however, the pace of change outside the firm’s sphere of control has been unprecedented. Changes in regulation, competition, supply, demand, and technology pose greater chances for disruption in ever shorter periods of time. At some point, a company’s inability to respond within an acceptable window to the pace of change of external factors will begin to exponentially add risk.
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >
