The Evolving Role of the CFO is Key to A Business’ Digital Readiness

By Rohit Nagarajan, President EMEA North at SAP

As we reach the halfway point in the year, I’ve been reflecting on the changing events around us and the challenges that we face in our business and our personal lives. I am by nature an optimist, but like everyone around me, I have been deeply moved by the human suffering in the Ukraine. We look out today across a landscape of inflationary pressure and supply aftershocks from the COVID crisis that impact us all in our everyday lives.

A key lesson from the past two years has been that the businesses that are able to adapt quickly to such volatility are the ones that can compensate for the shifting markets and provide secure employment. The CFO is a critical role within this mix and we’re seeing this role evolving to help organizations navigate today’s volatile markets through the provision of rapid and reliable insight into business performance.

The latest McKinsey global survey on the CFO reports that finance leaders are now deeply involved in determining how businesses adapt to the changing business environment, particularly where digital and finance intersect. The CFO’s role, which has already expanded beyond day-to-day finance oversight to strategic leadership, is increasingly focused on cybersecurity, risk and supply chain disruption. CFOs are now tasked with making critical decisions with far reaching consequence for the whole business, at pace, and often amidst uncertainty.

The CFOs that excel in this new environment now have more opportunities than ever to make real business impact on their company’s operations. Digitalisation has enabled the entire finance team to take advantage of new capabilities such as real-time analytics to share and act on deep insights into company performance. And with sustainability rising up the CEO agenda, those CFOs that have a handle on how this new force impacts the future fortunes of their enterprise will be well placed to succeed.

So what’s needed to empower the modern CFO on their journey today? A good starting point is to understand what they need to operate as part of their new mandate.

Acting in the here and now

The new approach sees finance teams acting swiftly and using up-to-date, deep insight from across the business, something that is only possible with the right data management tools. But, we all know that even the most impressive analytics tools are useless without the right data.

Studies show that knowledge workers waste as much as half their time as they struggle with data and that 60-70% of available data remains unused. Many businesses are working with siloed chunks of data that aren’t accessible to their analytics tools and this lack of automation is causing teams to waste time on mundane tasks that should be addressed by technology. A robust data management system that serves as a central repository for data from virtually any source is vital.

Predicting outcomes for long term, sustainable business outcomes

A successful CFO needs to be able to predict their long- and short-term business needs supported by AI and machine-learning and the right datasets. By applying this deep insight and analysis, gathered by these tools, to business processes, they can increase productivity, reduce errors and streamline processes whilst ensuring adherence to compliance and regulatory topics. This anticipation of challenge and identification of opportunity allows the CFO to demonstrate their organization’s value to their stakeholders, customers, employees and investors.

Collaboration at all levels increases the bottom line

As CFOs are becoming more involved in the business, they are broadening their internal networks and bringing together teams, including finance and IT, to create unified digital strategies that ensure finance teams can access, understand and apply the data insight as part of the business’ overall direction.

This collaboration is not only key for decision making but also brings additional nuance to the conversations that CFOs are having with other business functions including HR and sales. These functions are using cloud-based services that complement today’s hybrid workplace environment and it’s clear to see the value that the CFOs can bring to this wider decision making process.

According to this recent European study on digital transformation in the financial function, CFOs around our region already understand the strategic impact of digitalisation but are at an early stage of digital maturity across all countries. To take this to the next level, today’s CFO needs to be a key part of their organization’s digital transformation and an active contributor to the change within their business. Digital readiness is key to fulfil their new mandate and it’s vital for helping businesses ensure business continuity in uncertain and challenging markets.