Board International
Finance Leaders Must be More Strategic and Transformational - Data is key to Success

Recently, we conducted research of 600 CFOs and finance leaders around the world (200 from the U.S.) to determine how they are adapting to the business environment of today. As the acceleration of the digital enterprise continues at pace, we wanted to understand if companies are truly considering the office of finance as a valuable asset–and not just a supporting team – and if finance has the skills, technology and talent to justify that. The findings revealed the changing role of finance leaders and their teams, as well as how well organizations worldwide are enabling the finance function to exploit the biggest business advantage of the digital age -- data.

What the research clearly demonstrated is that now is the time for finance leaders to back their own transformational capabilities and take on a more strategic and impactful role in the business. Respondents knew that the office of finance could be potentially automated out of existence unless it makes the leap from a background support function to the strategic hub for vital data. Therefore, it’s no surprise that the large majority of finance leaders surveyed agreed that it’s time to accelerate the change from being a scorekeeper to performance driver, and finance should be the natural home for all data. However, there are currently some roadblocks to achieving this.

From a technology standpoint, while respondents noted that the two biggest priorities for digitizing the finance department were found to be deploying data and analytics insights securely at scale and increasing the speed and accuracy of forecasts, they were not able to confidently do these things at this time. In fact, just one-third of finance leaders surveyed believed their current reporting could be “totally accurate” when it comes to projecting performance and adapting forecasts in real-time to reflect changing market conditions.

Respondents also felt that how finance uses technology to influence business decision-making and drive strategy needed a complete overhaul and significant improvement. And, one in five finance leaders admitted they were still spending most of their time and resources on simply fixing the basics.

With regards to the personnel side of the business, finance leaders said that despite receiving the validation of their organizations’ leaders, who were ready to embrace the finance team as key players to support business goals, the transformation of finance needed to be reflected in wider finance team skills and culture development. Less than half (42%) of all U.S. finance leaders surveyed were completely confident their organization has the right technical skills and talent within the business to ensure technology is driving better business decisions, and the vast majority (94%) of senior finance decision-makers believed that company culture should encourage the finance team to be creative, curious, and rebellious, allowing them to think quickly and constantly challenge the status quo.

How can finance leaders overcome these obstacles and play a strategic role in shaping the digital enterprise? There is a huge opportunity for those who can enable the winning combination of transformative skills, culture, and technology throughout the office of finance to unlock the value of vital data insights. With data being the fuel for digital transformation, businesses that empower finance leaders and their teams to generate key understandings from data will effectively enable their leadership to make game-changing business decisions in real-time.

The senior executive team demands acceleration of the digital enterprise, growth, and transformed business models as a number one strategic priority. And they expect their finance leaders to play a crucial role in making this all happen. While there are still gaps to fill when it comes to pulling all of the vital elements together to achieve this, the research conducted demonstrates that the opportunity is there for those ready to seize it.

So, what can CFOs and other financial leaders do? They can begin to fill these holes by starting with democratizing access to intelligence, analytics and planning delivered via the cloud. Doing this will enable them to provide more proactive strategic guidance and an empowering and transformative experience, helping to lead the business forward.