Is the future of finance new technology or new people?

When you ask a CFO what his or her job is, the answer seems easy: supporting the strategic agenda of an organization with the right financial information. But the CFO’s role is being reshaped by digital, data, risk and uncertainty in addition to increased stakeholder scrutiny and regulation.
 

In EY’s recent publication, The DNA of the CFO: Part 2, we surveyed 769 finance leaders worldwide, 32 of which were Canadian. Canadian respondents say they have some catching up to do compared to their global CFO cohorts in the path of transformation, especially with the technology and efficiency components. 

But where to begin? According to our CFOs, cutting out manual tasks, spreadsheets and the detailed and retrospective reporting will allow their focus to be spent in three key areas.

1. Building capabilities to use and exploit data through analytics- Getting to a single source of financial data, meaningful insights and the proper cascade of performance indicators takes time. The main obstacle is sub-optimal technology investments. Canadian CFO’s put 11% more emphasis on new technologies to accomplish this over their global peers.
2. Building the right talent – The finance workforce needs to shift to more analytic and judgment-based activities. With greater diversity making up the workforce, strategic thinkers, data scientists, financial masterminds and business sector talent must come together as key ingredients on the road to success.
3. Driving efficient in the finance function processes- As mentioned above, accelerating the adoption of new technology combined with process improvement, such as Robotic Process Automation, will drive efficiencies and accelerate the transformation of the finance function.

There are many challenges in the current context of disruption, and the past is no longer a predictor of the future. Keep on task CFOs! Decisions must be made faster and the data must be harnessed to drive predictive modelling, insights and action.

Stay tuned. More to come in our DNA of the CFO series!