The Ledger

“Live Finance” is Shaping Today’s CFOs

“Turning live insights into action makes CFOs much-needed strategic partners”

Digitalization is upping the ante on how finance can serve as a strategic partner to your organization. It is transforming finance’s ability to analyze, report and respond with transparency and agility. Old school finance practices are quickly being replaced with instantaneous facts, figures and findings. By harnessing the benefits of what SAP calls “live insights to action,” CFOs become the power plays who provide a real-time financial perspective across the organization. This insight is needed for both fact-based strategic decision-making and effective management of day-to-day operations.

Read More at The Digitialist by SAP >

Get the Most Out of Your Company’s Data

No matter what size your company is, you might not be getting the most out of your data. Do you struggle to answer questions like, “Why are the best employees leaving the organization? Why are some employees more productive than others? How can employees become more creative?” The answers to these questions are probably hiding in your data. Although companies collect a great deal of data about their employees, most of them don’t do a great job of leveraging it for insights to find the answers. There are five important steps that can improve your data practices.

Read More at The Harvard Business Review >

Are Your Employees Costing You More Than You Think?

But human beings are involved in all aspects of running a business. People, not processes, are at the core of enterprise risks, and human actions can have far-reaching financial implications and impact a company’s bottom line, market value, and future growth. Any employer whose people fail to follow the company’s policies and procedures knows the resulting havoc that can ensue. This is where risk management comes into play.

Read More at Strategic Finance Magazine >

How Critical Thinking Defines Data Analysis

Critical thinking comes with the territory of finance professionals, and data analysis is an ideal setting for developing critical thinking. If critical thinking is not in each step of the data analysis process, the result will become flawed or useless. Data analysis requires you to think critically by probing, connecting disparate facts, and synthesizing. In turn, critical thinking is enabled by the ability to think analytically and apply tools to help extract insights and actionable information from data. But how does critical thinking as we define it merge with diagnostic data analysis?

Read More at Strategic Finance Magazine >