By Krishnan Raghunathan, Head, Finance & Accounting Services, WNS
From shifts toward online sales to preparing eventual office returns, CFOs are seeing drastic transitions in revenue models, having to rapidly plan within the parameters of a constantly changing business landscape. The Global CFO Survey 2020 conducted by Everest Group, and supported by WNS, reveals over 54 percent of CFOs worry about ensuring their organization’s viability through the economic downturn and 51 percent are concerned about increasing liability and risk exposure resulting from new modes of working. It’s clear that building ‘future-ready’ financial systems are mission-critical to success as we enter into a post-COVID new normal.
Here are several cues CFOs should use to set up their companies for financial success as the world firms to a new way of monetizing. With CFOs directly leading the charge in the overall financial health of a business, this could be key to coming out on top during and after this pandemic.
The Role of a Financial Leader is No Longer Functional; it’s Strategic
According to The Global CFO Survey 2020, around 53 percent of CFOs are contemplating the re-assessment of their organization’s strategy, from operating to service delivery models. This includes short-term strategies such as remote work models and an immediate focus on liquidity, long-term organizational challenges and external factors that will decide if a company is truly ‘future-ready’ down the road. Measures that encompass Business Community Planning (BCP), re-evaluating location strategy, and driving new methods of digitalization are and will be crucial initiatives in preparing any organization’s financial functions for the new normal.
In tandem, CFOs are facing challenges to act as an architect in driving agility, resiliency and strategic decision-making. Over the next several months, and in some cases years, CFOs will need to prepare for a talent gap and competitive career landscape they never faced before. It’s going to be clear which companies were preparing and ensured future-readiness, and which were sticking to traditional methods. It will be pivotal for CFOs to hone in on their future planning to avoid falling behind or leading a company to potential financial business losses.
CFOs Must Adopt New Technologies
Digital finance is the future, meaning it’s crucial for CFOs to adapt and adopt new digital tools and technologies in mind. Having an open, entrepreneurial mindset rather than simply sticking to existing or legacy systems will overcome roadblocks that could cause an organization to fall behind. In fact, more than 45 percent of CFOs believe that legacy systems and changing cultural inertia are the top roadblocks their organizations must overcome for success in the new normal.
It’s not just implementing a technology-led approach either, CFOs also need to incorporate digitization that is developed with a process-led approach. This could include hyper automation, AI, and data analysis that get to the root of an issue without CFOs having to spend hours on a specific task or outcome. Use cases with BPaaS and data analytics would enable various data sources to be funneled and analyzed instantly saving valuable time and resources for finance teams. AI can even take this a step further by giving real-time results from revenue management to customer service responses.
Integrations such as Finance One Office also ensure the convergence of various F&A systems, ensuring better employee and customer experience. For instance, Finance One Office allows for upstream and downstream integrations this way stakeholders at all levels have streamlined and time-efficient workflows.
Whether it’s to consolidate resources or enhance processes via digital enablement, CFOs can’t fear new technologies as we approach the new normal. According to the Global CFO Survey 2020, attraction and retention of the best talent are seen to be one of the key contributors to a future-ready organization. This means CFOs who are prepared and in favor of necessary digital tools to succeed will be picked over those who are not. Changing traditional systems and considerations around cultural inertia will create a considerable gap between CFOs that succeed and those who don’t.
To succeed, CFOs will find they will need to embrace digital transformation for an impactful financial strategy.
Financial Teams Need Data to Fuel Objectives, Not Exhaust Efforts
Leveraging data is nothing new for financial teams. Those in the finance and accounting space have always been dealing with data. However, the change here is that finance teams shouldn’t be exhausted by efforts to analyze and sort through metrics. Instead, intelligent, strategic data analysis should fuel existing systems for financial professionals. Rather than generating data as a by-product, very late in the piece, the focus of finance organizations needs to be on capturing and leveraging data upfront, so that it powers key finance processes and systems.
Financial teams need access to data, both external and internal, via data analysis and AI enablement that have already examined company metrics via real-time processing. Someone who has a responsibility to deliver outcomes for an organization’s financial goals shouldn’t have to also worry about sifting through millions of metrics from various channels. The real-time usage of data at all points of the workflow will in effect fuel intelligent and connected systems. Unlocking insights with intelligent automation is a mechanism for fast and accurate financial forecasting.
CFOs are consistently challenged to validate their operating models, current constraints, and predictive abilities to scale in the new normal. For an organization to truly be future-ready, CFOs must ensure the company is being agile, making quick decisions, anticipating potential challenges with tactful solutions prepared, and ensuring digital enablement.
According to PwC, nearly 32 percent of CFOs are looking toward tech-driven products or services, based on a substantial inclination to move away from cash preservation to cash excellence from the balance sheet to working capital to capital expenditures. Digitally enabled use cases such as Finance-Intelligence-in-a-Box (FIAB) allows for integrations that call for this level of access to tech-driven insight, including journal entry analytics, full-stack working capital analytics, AP risk and audit analytics, collections & AR analytics, and much more.
With this in mind, CFOs must also not forget the critical need for human judgment. Even with data analytics services powered by AI technology, there needs to be a team of experts that can not only review the analysis, but apply strategic decision-making based on it.
CFOs, it’s Time to Embrace Future Readiness
To make it to the new normal, CFOs must embrace the reality that traditional systems are improving across industries by digital models. This spans from the upstream and downstream integration of systems to ensure the best customer and stakeholder experiences, to the implementation of data analytics that gives a holistic analytical view and an advantage to CFOs at the forefront of digital transformation.
Whether it’s automation or data analytics capabilities, the finance organization of the future will be the one that is able to implement insights-led digital finance operations sooner than later. Get ready for the new normal, and ensure your finance models are able to sustain the rapid digital and social change continuing to occur every day.
Krishnan Raghunathan is the Head, Finance & Accounting Services for WNS, a leading provider of global Business Process Management (BPM).
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.