The Future Of Finance Is Now!
Anders Liu-Lindberg
Leading advisor to senior Finance and FP&A leaders on creating impact through business partnering | Interim | VP Finance | Business Finance
Sounds like a fluffy statement you’ve heard before? Most likely it does, however, in many ways it’s true. What is meant by this is that all the things we see in the future of the finance function is already available to us now. The struggle is around figuring out to apply it successfully. Let’s start by considering the top priorities that senior finance leaders see for the future courtesy of SSON that have done a survey of 130 finance leaders as a build up to their Future of Finance conference in London on 11-13 February.
Top priorities:
- Process optimization
- Growth strategy
- Performance management
See, not much news under the sun in terms of what senior finance leaders are prioritizing in the coming years. The only surprise on the list is that Finance now gets involved in the growth strategy of the company. A good sign of Finance starting to look beyond the tip of its nose and getting involved in the business.
How do we get this done?
You would think that since priorities don’t change much in the finance function that we would already have the needed skills to deliver on them. However, 95% of the respondents said they experienced a skill-gap in the finance function. That’s 95%! Perhaps now it’s less of a surprise that priorities don’t change because we haven’t solved them, and we don’t have the talent to solve them.
Main skill-gaps:
- Digital
- People management
- Innovation
This points to a clear sign that the challenges around process optimization and performance management are to be solved through digitizing the finance function and innovating for new ways of doing things. This digital transformation would be led by process automation, robotization and data analytics the respondents said. The key question to answer would be where do we find the people that can digitize finance processes and implement predictive and prescriptive analytics into performance management?
- Is it education that needs to change?
- Will specialized vendors and consultants be able to do the trick?
- Can we simply skip the people part and go straight to bots?
As always with these kinds of surveys they raise more questions than answers yet they’re a good starting point to figure out what the key challenges are that we need to solve.
What do you see in the future for Finance?
Is your view of the future of finance different than what’s portrayed in this survey? If so what are some of the challenges that you’re looking to solve and are you making them a top priority. It’s interesting for me to see that business partnering was not part of the top priorities. It was identified as one of the missing skill-gaps though although only at #5. That just confirms, however, the view that we’re failing with business partnering because we’re not making it a top priority. I see a future where transactional processes are automated, analytics is done via AI meaning we’re discussing our options with a bot, and only business partnering is done by humans. Likely this will not happen tomorrow as we still have some age-old challenges to solve!
If you would like to read the report in full you can download it here. You can also check out the Future of Finance and CFO Summit at www.futureoffinancesummit.com. Let’s step into the future together and help each other solve the key challenges. Are you ready?
For previous articles about robotics, finance transformation or the future of finance please continue to read below. You can also follow me on Twitter here.
Are You Ready For Robotics Process Automation?
Have You Met Your Robot Accountant Yet?
To Re-Invent Accounting We Must Go Back To School
What Defines A Finance Master?
The CFOs Roadmap To Transforming Finance
How Finance People Can Be More Successful
The New Career Path For Finance Professionals
Do You Have A Finance Business Partner Mindset?
CFOs Are Going Virtual And Here's Why
This Is What Analytics Is All About!
Anders Liu-Lindberg is the Head of Global Finance Program Management Office at Maersk and I have more than 10 years of experience working with Finance at Maersk both in Denmark and abroad. I am also the co-founder of the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 6,000 members. My main goal at Maersk is to create a world-class finance function not least when it comes to Business Partnering. I am the co-author of the book “Skab V?rdi Som Finansiel Forretningspartner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with 23.000+ followers.
Strategy | Enterprise Performance | Finance Transformation | Business Analytics | Risk Management | Governance | Compliance
6 年Anders, I'm not surprised that growth strategy featured as one of the top priorities for CFOs to address in the survey. I believe this is driven mostly by the fact that today businesses are operating in a world?of complex supply chains, intense competition, shifting customer expectations, increased regulatory demands, emerging operating models and exposure to significant business risk. Addressing these concerns is not simply a matter of squeezing out fat from the operations, which unfortunately has been our first point of call when faced with a need of growing profits. A business can cut costs only up to a certain extent, hence the need for a different approach to grow the business, boost revenues and ultimately profits. It's time we transform from beancounters to beangrowers.
Group CFO/?konomidirekt?r hos CRH Denmark A/S
6 年I agree Anders Liu-Lindberg and especially because of two things: Prices have gone down which also gives smaller businesses the opportunity to utilize digitalization and automization The user friendliness of the apps are so much better now that you do not need a degree in IT to work with them
VP M&A and Corp Dev Kerry North America Region
6 年Good article Anders. I'd add - what happens in the future when junior finance and accounting roles have been automated and that 5+ years of experiencing the nuts and bolts has gone?