CFO not only stands for Chief Financial Officer but also for Chief Future Officer —or that’s what should be aimed for from now on in this constant flux future. In order to keep up with today’s marketplace, CFOs and financial controllers must be innovative, anticipating and predicting what’s next to save time, accomplish profitability, achieve sales goals, and manage controls.
It is worth noting that finance leaders must be ready to face the constant challenges through digital transformation, such as:
To stay ahead overcoming any adversity, the skills below have proven to be a requirement for the modern CFO and controller to be always ready for any changing circumstance, having a clear vision that impacts the organization’s overall strategy. Along with the necessary capabilities, the right technology is essential to achieve success, leveraging the digital economy to upgrade your business to the next level.
“By adopting innovative technologies, finance will strengthen its business leadership through compliance, accuracy, and efficiency.”
Amy Hood, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft
Digital disruption has brought opportunity growth, as well as new challenges. With the right mindset embracing how technology has evolved business operations, the financial leader will be prepared to support their organizational growth in any business area. The emerging expectations and opportunities in today’s transformation have thrust finance leaders to find a new way to accelerate impact in their company, such as Microsoft Modern Finance.
The role of the Financial Controller also demands a keen eye for detail with a myriad of processes to smoothly control the finance department, mainly if the reports are managed via Excel, striving to ensure accurate actual vs budget vs historic reports. That is why more finance leaders opt for the latest technologies that allow them to have greater visibility into results. Modern Finance automates the mundane, complex finance and accounting operations to work effortlessly and proactively while minimizing errors.
One of the most common mistakes organizations still make is limiting their financial professionals to the traditional financial position. The most successful CFO and Financial Controller associate with other finance roles. They open up to new ideas, evaluate, and make joint decisions that have a substantial and lasting impact on their organization.
The Ideal Evolution of an Exemplary CFO
CFOs support corporate goals while minimizing risk with limited visibility and engagement in board activities. The modern CFO goes beyond to take a more decisive lead on business strategy, adopting ideal treats, such as:
Modern finance roles harness technology to interpret the results —not only to report. According to a 2020 Korn Ferry CFO Pulse Survey, the CFO respondents spent almost one-third of their time driving strategy (32%). Finance leaders help mitigate risk and automate finance operations by utilizing the right technology to create systems and tools supporting these processes.
The two most essential capabilities to the future of the finance function
Operational information
Strategy enablement
*45% of surveyed CFOs agreed with these skills
Source: CFO Pulse Survey 2020
More proactive. Less reactive.
Finance leaders can overcome the constant challenges by evolving with technology, staying competitive with streamlined information and data sharing. The latest automated technologies have facilitated the creation of an ecosystem that revolutionizes finance operations to increase proactivity and reduce errors in strategic planning and business development.
Adopting the right capabilities and technology will turn you into a real change agent with solid data governance and a more unified reporting operation.
