The Ledger
Curated content foranalytical business leaders
New Pressure for the Next Generation CFO
April 12, 2017
As margins from traditional business models are eroding, new engines for profitability have emerged. Airbnb is a great example of this. If you don’t know what Airbnb is, it is an online marketplace and hospitality service that allows people to lease or rent short-term lodging all around the world. The best part- they own no lodgings. The company was recently valued at billions more than the world’s largest hotel chain. Robert Landon with Oracle credits intangible assets such as branding, customer relationships, intellectual property and human capital. While this is an extreme example, it shows why CFOs are under so much pressure to invest in the value of their intangible assets.
Read More at Forbes Magazine >
It’s Time to Take Analytics Seriously
April 5, 2017
Analytics have become an afterthought in many organizations because it is used for tracking the effectiveness of business processes or for data visualization. It is time for finance professionals to realize that in the era of digital transformation, analytics needs to be their priority. According to Gartner, CIOs are responsible for building what they call the “civilization infrastructures”. These platforms are made up of five domains with data and analytics at the heart of the organizations of the future.
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >
Best Practices for Outsourcing Your FP&A
March 29, 2017
There has been a lot of talk about outsourcing transnational financial processes such as Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable, but have you ever thought about outsourcing your FP&A? It can be a bit of a challenge since many FP&A activities are not necessarily seen as “transnational”, but it is all depends on how you classify these activities in your organization.
Read More at The EPM Channel >
Are You Suffering from Cost Management Fatigue?
March 28, 2017
Do you constantly work on cost-cutting initiatives that don’t provide any value or insight to push growth in your organization? If the answer is yes, you may be suffering from cost management fatigue. The main reason companies struggle with this is because they tend to make across the board cost cuts that are not connected to their strategy. Most organizations wait until they have a problem to act, at which point they don’t have time to make the right trade-offs for the long term. Cost management should support your strategy but if you aren’t directing your spending to the right places, then you are missing opportunities to grow.
Read More at The Harvard Business Review >
