Will the Agile CFO please stand-up?

Faced with advances in technology and growing responsibilities, many CFOs are bracing themselves for more change ahead—and understand that they must adapt to be effective. As well as traditional Financial activities, CFOs are expected to help the organization identify innovation opportunities and create the flexibility to act on them.  HR can help Finance become Agile victors than Agile victims. Here is how.

A report by Accenture in 2019 named ‘Finance 2020: Death by Digital’ says that “In just 3 years, finance will face a complete transformation into becoming agile. Machine-learning and robotic systems will automate manual work, freeing up finance teams with 75% lesser work.” At the core of this new approach is the changing role of the CFO, shifting from cost authority accountant to business value architect. 

From finance specialists to strategists, today's leading CFOs don't simply dote on the bottom line; they help bring it into focus by navigating changing business landscapes, spot new opportunities and drive growth.  

The modern CFO spends less time on the books and more time helping other lines of business use data to set the organisation’s strategic direction, drive growth and speed innovation. – Financial Times

According to a report from IBM, ‘80 percent of CFOs recognize the need to support governance. At the same time, fewer than 20 percent are applying innovation at high levels for new ideas, collaboration or analytics. Investment in innovation and tracking innovation with new metrics remain areas where Finance is least likely to contribute to innovation’.

“Agile CFOs use their inherent governance position to support, enable and guide innovation.” - IBM

Although it sounds counter-intuitive, the key is that when tracking innovation in the early stages of evaluation the focus should be on the big-picture potential. ROI can be calculated when more is known and when working in an Agile way, Finance teams will actually be able to forecast and plan more accurately.  

How can HR help Finance become an Agile victor and not an Agile victim?

This is a great starting point to bring your CFO and Finance function along the Agile journey.  As the table demonstrates, in reality, Agile speaks the language of Finance.

Collaboration starts in the Board Room

From an HR perspective, and from a strategic point of view, HR’s role is to inspire and provoke new thinking by staying aware of context and trends and bringing this knowledge to all parts of the organisation. However, HR cannot drive business agility and innovation alone, it needs to collaborate closely with other functions, starting in the board room, to create practices and processes that enable agility and innovation, and break down the silos that currently rule the C-level.