A core focus of finance leaders today is to change the outlook of finance functions to meet the ever-evolving customer expectations and drive business productivity. As a matter of innovative business strategy, CFOs and other executive finance leaders think of ‘digital disruption as a way to achieve this goal. As CFOs make a pivotal part of the organization, they share a close relationship with the board, directors, managers, and employees, hence enabling innovation is not a difficult process. For a CFO to make a good leader in translating agendas into actions, he needs digital capabilities to be deployed in 4 critical areas for outstanding business output and success. Let’s try and explore them.
Finance Process
Deploying the strength of robotics and automation in the finance process can enable better finance planning & improve forecasting. To obtain single source cutting edge data precision, CFOs need to automate data analysis. Robotics can be a great deal to finance leaders as they can generate standardized financial reports and allow for a more narrative commentary. A financial analyst course can bring you closer to realizing such capabilities.
Finance Information
A company is driven by a single owner, but by many stakeholders. CFOs and finance leaders play a critical role in building trust between the business and its stakeholders through producing authenticate and due diligent financial information explaining the business and future goals. To achieve this, CFOs need to create user-friendly dashboards and exciting graphics to enable stakeholders to access information at a faster pace. Finance leaders can also deliver detailed reports of ubiquitous finance data. CFOs can also use digital capabilities to integrate financial data from multiple sources.
Decision-Making
Finance leaders to make strategic and informed financial decisions can follow a top-down scenario analysis. A robust self-optimizing algorithm can be adapted by finance managers to forecast preliminary sales and understand market/consumer trends. To run the business, working capital becomes a dire necessity, and finance leaders can boost working capital and inventory management by building ground-breaking demand models to help businesses compete and sustain in a digitally-driven market economy.
Value Creation
Finance leaders must be constantly focused on how to uncover shareholder value and expand business growth opportunities to stay ahead in a digitally agile environment. Price optimization strategies and Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) identification tracker can be optimized to track inventory and resources at detailed levels. This also allows finance leaders to understand comprehensively the degree of value creation and resource effectiveness. Business is always at risk due to uncertain market volatility caused by political, economic, and environmental factors, hence CFOs should invest in building effective statistical and predictive analytical capabilities to identify unforeseen business risks and signal early warnings.
Understanding the four key areas, CFOs, and finance leaders may not have the right knowledge and expertise to excel in these areas but a digital transformation certification can make it work!