The Ledger
Curated content foranalytical business leaders
Forbes: The Big 2022 Trends For CFOs: Digital, Talent Retention And Remote Work
“One of the top focus areas for our team as we emerge from the pandemic amid the rapid, relentless pace of change is prioritizing data management to improve reporting and, ultimately, insights. As part of transforming the finance function at MassMutual to help us create more time to add analytical and creative value, having access to clean and organized data is key. Overall, I think this continues to be an opportunity for finance organizations so they can be more efficient and make informed, real-time recommendations leveraging data and technology as strategic advisors to the business.”
CFO Magazine: Supply Chain Turmoil: Applying the Lessons
“Improved planning and forecasting, if an organization undertakes the effort, will come in handy as lead times return to normal levels and suppliers return to realistic production schedules. It will also help if consumer and business-to-business demand wither due to persistent price inflation.”
Forbes: Why Today’s CFO Must Embrace Enterprise Strategy
“Aspiring finance professionals need to be agile and curious. We need critical thinkers who understand business value drivers and are adept at allocating resources towards the activities that will drive the highest returns on investment. People in financial roles need to be more tech savvy than ever to leverage automation and eliminate mundane transactional work. By creating “time to think,” finance professionals can deliver more timely, actionable insights to the business.”
CFO Magazine: Prakash Hariharan: ‘CFOs Need to Have a Good Partner Ecosystem’
“However, we believe in order for you to be able to manage a problem like [inflation], you need to have the ability to make some forward-looking decisions coupled with a few scenarios. Think about scenario analysis as a method that organizations are now using to make flexible medium to long-term plans. You start with identifying one of your driving forces — it could be around revenue, cost, or margin — and then you identify the uncertainties within this broader objective, and then you develop models. And as the scenarios play out, you get to execute a set of predefined actions.
All of that requires you to get data insights across the enterprise, and maybe outside the enterprise as well. A few forward-looking statistical models. And as you learn more in terms of the evolving situation, you need to act — you need to hone in on one of the [levers] or scenarios that you can take a set of actions.”