The role of finance executives is changing, extending beyond traditional accounting processes to new responsibilities including transforming the company’s technology, data and analytics infrastructure. Modern chief financial officers (CFOs) must understand the growing importance of technology, and how it drives the finance function and affects other critical facets of the organization.
As CFOs emerge as strategic leaders, they must focus on five pillars of success to modernize the finance function:
- People: Cultivating talent with the digital skill set needed to master current and planned technologies
- Processes: Re-engineering current processes to address current challenges, align with industry best practices and position the company for the future
- Technology: Maximizing current applications and exploring systems to support future growth
- Reporting and analytics: Shifting from a transactional focus to supporting critical reporting needs that enable growth
- Controls: Building a framework for governing people, processes and technology that meets the needs of internal and external stakeholders
Embracing process-led technology enablement will establish progressive finance executives as business performance leaders. Ultimately, CFOs can be catalysts of digital innovation, ingraining continued modernization in the company’s culture and processes, and establishing technology as the foundation of the organization. While keeping pace with rapid technology changes can be difficult for middle market CFOs, those that don’t embrace technology risk being left behind.
