Reinventing Finance: How to make the Leap?
Finance functions have been on a transformation journey for a long time. From offshoring operational activities to low cost countries to creating Centres of Excellence in Europe where the time zone is better aligned to in country CFOs and costs are still lower.
Now CFOs are faced with a new challenge to reinvent their teams in size, expertise and role focus. Finance teams of the future will be composed of smaller operational teams supported by automated processes and in country Business Partners providing forward looking insight and analysis to CFOs.
The big question most CFOs are currently debating is how they will make the leap?
Their approach must include the following initiatives.
Communicate Vision
Creation and communication of the Vision, i.e. Roles and Responsibilities of the New Finance Function will ensure the team understands changes and can support the journey (e.g. by learning new skills, providing ideas for automation, etc.).
Automate operational activities
Using Robotics tools to automate manual activities will increase controls and team efficiency. Although Robotics will support the resize of the team, experienced accountants and process owners will still be required to solve any exceptions and investigate/correct errors.
Adopt Machine Learning Advisors
Machine learning advisors will provide recommendations for exceptions (those not solved by the robotics tool). Upon Finance Team acceptance or correction of the exception, the advisor will learn and update the process rules. The benefit of adopting these tools will increase year by year until the exceptions are reduced to a small percentage.
Digitise communication between teams
Although email will never cease, workflow solutions will provide full traceability of data, actions and decisions as well as increase data accuracy due to in-built controls. The Finance team’s efficiency will skyrocket as they shift their time from following up on information via emails and calls to analysing data via a central workflow.
Create a self-service dashboard culture
Visualisation tools will eliminate report creation and query management as the business and C-suite will be able to drill down into real time data. Finance will use these tools to perform forward looking analysis and provide insights to the CFO.
Integrate systems and data with the Cloud
As a long term solution, most finance functions will be moving to the cloud. Cloud will have a pivotal role in the future of finance since it will eliminate touchpoints across multiple systems with consequent data breakage.
Resize and re-skill teams
Size and skillset of the team will be reconsidered to aligned to the new vision (inc. new roles and responsibilities). The team will be composed of a mix of experienced accountants, financial business partners and new digital/innovation experts. Internal and external training should be provided to both new and old team members.
Inject a curious and innovative culture
In order to provide the new advisor role, Finance teams will need to continuously adopt new technologies as they become available and re-think current processes/analysis. This can be achieved by collaborating with internal or external change teams on a project basis and by promoting curiosity and innovation in the team to encourage new ideas and initiatives.
Most CFOs have started this journey and are making good progress. However, there is a need in the industry for creativity in ensuring motivation remains high, career progression is still accessible and new ideas are taken on board throughout this period of change.
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