Digitalization, Business Oriented Finance Transformation, and Value Creation

The highlight of Legend Capital 2021 CFO Club Annual Forum

On September 16, 2021, Legend Capital's CFO Club Annual Forum with the theme of " Finance-Operation Integration Driven by Digitalization " was held online and offline in Beijing. 200 CEOs, CFOs, and senior executives from Legend Capital's invested companies joined the forum.?

From the finance system digitization, operation digitalization, to the emerging concept of finance-operation integration, the digital transformation not only boosts the company’s operation efficiency but also helps the company achieve the management goals better and faster. The guest speakers shared their experiences and insights from different perspectives as CEOs, CFOs, and industrial experts.

We must do better to predict and adapt the future, and the best way to predict the future is to create it.

Collin Jin, Deloitte China and Asia Pacific Audit & Assurance Innovation Leader?

• "Digital iteration of infrastructure, digital applications on the product level, the transformation of traditional industries, and the development of emerging industries, even smart cities, great changes have been taken place in AI-enabled solutions, automation, and digitalization areas. For the development of enterprises, we must transfer from extensive growth to more intensive, innovative and digital growth."?
• "The methodology of digital transformation emphasizes a top-down approach. Enterprises must consider the corporate business strategy while evaluating the goals of digitalization. In addition, we should accentuate data analysis and its application. This is the very important distinguishing feature of competitive companies."?
• " At present, about 80% of enterprises have achieved computerization, but less than 1% have completed forecast and self-adaption through digital solutions. In the future, we must do better on prediction and self-adaption, and the best way to predict the future is to create it. Only by adapting to the rapid changes and taking the new opportunities brought by the challenges, can enterprises be successful. "

The core principle of finance transformation should be based on the company's strategy. It requires finance team work closely with the business team, transforming from bookkeeper to manager.

James Guo, CFO & Director of Meng Xiang Group

• "The principle to realize finance transformation is to set out from the company's strategy, to formulate a financial strategy in line with the company's future development, set goals and make clear the path to achieve these goals."?
• "A business-oriented finance transformation includes many perspectives: bookkeeping to management, data collection to value creation, compliance to intelligence. As a value integrator, to create value for customers and users, the finance team must deeply involve in the business operation to make suggestions and provide analytical insight to the management team. The finance team should actively identify issues and offer feedback timely through the financial system."

It’s difficult to achieve a successful digital transformation ignoring the business scenarios.

Sun Yan, CEO of Enjoy Dental Clinic Group & Founder of IDSO Dental Alliance

• “Dental clinic is a completely non-standard industry. The lack of standardized processes and unified indicators leads to a huge difficulty of comparison and communication among different clinics. Thus, we believe the standardization of the operation process is the key point of digital dental clinics.”
• “We found that in the process of digital transformation, an enterprise can hardly achieve the goal if only satisfy some statement requirement or certain functions deviating from business scenarios.”

?“Everything can be done by RPA”. And 69% of enterprises have begun their journey of intelligent digitalization.

Gao Yang, Co-founder & COO of Intelligence Indeed

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can be applied to help companies get rid of repetitive operations and achieve 7*24 and 100% accurate operations, so as to realize data security and low management costs.

A business oriented finance transformation requires disruptive innovation on existing working models, processes and systems.?

?Chen Qinghui, Vice President & Industry Line General Manager & Chairman Assistant of QZing Technology

Informatization planning is the core process of enterprise transformation, which requires executives to take the lead and all parties to be involved with clear responsibilities. All parties of the enterprise need to make disruptive innovations to the existing work models, customary processes, and systems. Only in this way can we ensure the realization of planning goals and help enterprises move towards digitalization.

Finance function and business operation, seem apart, but can be integrated by proper digitalization approach

Maggie Fu, Managing Director & Chief Financial Consultant of Legend Capital

• “In the survey of Legend Capital, 90% of CFOs believe that the integration of operation and finance can support efficient decision-making and refine operation analysis. Just as in the past two decades, our travel mode has evolved from paper maps, network maps, and GPS navigation on mobiles. The latest version can track the real-time road conditions and optimize route suggestions. In the future, it may further develop into a ‘schedule + online car-hailing’ model to make travel fully intelligent.”
• “There are three levels for an enterprise to realize finance-operation integration. First is financial compliance, the basic level mainly for the recording of past-event data. Digitalization can provide data and other support for financial compliance. The second is the core level which is the participation of finance in real-time management in the business process. Digital applications can improve efficiency and experience, and effectively manage risks. The third is the level of value creation which means finance takes part in decision making, providing prediction and guidance. Digital support can improve the quality and accuracy of business decisions.”
• “Data fusion requires the optimization of the top-level design of the systems, and unification of the data standard. The key to process integration is defining the core process, then the finance team takes part in key control points, optimizing the approval steps. Management integration emphasizes the establishment of a “user first” and "no waste" culture. Through the three levels supporting by digitalization, can one achieve the full integration and a successful finance transformation.”