How Humans Must Re-Invent Their Role In Finance

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Remote work, digitalization, and agility are all elements putting humans in Finance under pressure. To many they are buzzwords, but I can assure you their impact on the finance function is real. What made us successful yesterday will not make us successful tomorrow. We must re-invent ourselves to play a role in the future finance function. 

Understanding the burning platform is one thing. Knowing how to act on it is different. You need concrete guidance and steps to take to re-invent yourself. You also need to understand in which direction you should go. This week we deep-dive on how can we create that change and what we should change into? 

How we deal with the numbers is changing 

Finance is about numbers – producing them and using them – and both are changing. Production will be left to the machine as described in “Will Finance Become 100% Digitalized”. We might not see a fully automated production as the control role is still needed, but the transactional work will cease to exist. The real question is how using the numbers will change?

We will refer to the role of “management accountant” as defined by CIMA to illustrate how we will be using the numbers in the future. 

• Reporter: The reporter will be automated to a large degree and reports will be provided as a self-service to business leaders.
• Steward: This is what we would refer to as the “corporate specialists”. The steward is a highly specialized role at the corporate level that defines rules and governance for how the robots and humans should work. The role will also be responsible for implementing new accounting standards etc. In many ways it what we know as a controller today.
• Analyst: This role will be consolidated into a Center of Excellence (CoE) for Analytics. The analysts will build the reporting engine, conduct advanced analytics, and provide simple and easy to understand visualization of the numbers.
• Partner: This is where most of human interaction will happen in the future. The partner is the face of Finance towards the business. The role acts as a translator of requirements from the business to the CoE and will ensure guidelines from the steward are adhered to by business leaders. More importantly, the partner will act as a catalyst from strategy formulation to execution and will lead the important discussions of: why did it happen, what can we do about it, and how can we make it happen. 

The goal of Finance is to become a trusted advisor. CEOs and senior business leaders are looking for insights that can help them make better decisions. They do not care how numbers are produced except they want it done as efficiently as possible. That is why our focus should be on creating a partnership with them where human interaction is critical. 

The crisis showed us that we could partner almost as effectively remotely as we could physically. For some finance professionals, it even worked better because they were partnering with business leaders all over the world. When connecting virtually became the norm everyone stepped up to the plate and collaborated much more effectively. 

The partner as the business-facing role 

There are two paths for finance professionals to follow: deeply specialize as an analyst or steward or become a business-facing generalist like the partner. 

Specialists like the steward will be the controllers that ensure everything happens according to the rules (be it a human or robot having the responsibility). This goes beyond defining the rules from a governance perspective as it also applies to analysts and an algorithmic perspective. This could be data scientists working in the Analytics CoE. The steward and the analyst will have little human interaction but must be the best at what they do. They define how the machine should work. They interact with the partner to understand how to adjust the machine to better fit business needs. Finally, they give direction to change business behavior in case rules and governance are not followed. 

Generalists will need a basic understanding of what the specialists do. As a partner to the business and the only business-facing role, they need an in-depth understanding of how the business works. They must be experts at relationship-building and communication to influence business decisions. They must also act as a translator between the specialists in Finance and other departments. This will allow specialists to continue to deepen their specialization without having to acquire too many partner capabilities.  

For Finance to truly become a trusted advisor all roles must work very well together. The partner cannot achieve this alone. The partner is not more important than the specialist just because this is the person that speaks with business leaders. All the roles must form a symbiosis and done well Finance and the humans in the function will have a grand role to play in the future! 

Which path will you go down and why? In some way, this is a classical choice people have had to make for ages but the divide between the two becomes clearer. If you are not among the best at what you do you must consider if you should do something different or how you can become one of the best. This will not only give you a more satisfying career but will also boost your impact on the company. 

I hope you now have a better understanding of the megatrends of remote work, digitalization, agility, and human interaction will impact the future of work in Finance. Instead of fearing these you should embrace them and figure out how to make them work for you. Together we will use them to build the future finance function and become trusted business advisors or deep specialists who are world champions at what they do. Does that not sound intriguing?

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This was the fourth and final article in the mini-series around global megatrends and their impact on the finance function. You can read the previous ones below. Next week we tackle the last trend and explore what will happen to human interactions in Finance.

The Rise Of The Remote Finance Worker, Or Not?

Will Finance Become 100% Digitalized?

The Future Of Finance Is Agile In Every Possible Way

You can read articles from my previous series "Crisis Management for Finance Professionals" below.

15 Tips For Finance Professionals When In The Middle Of A Crisis

My 6 Finance Career Lessons From Times Of Crisis

30 Ways Finance Can Restore Shareholder Value Post A Crisis

How To Survive The Crisis Without Layoffs While Cutting Spend

Lost Your Job Due To Coronavirus? Here's How To Find A New One!

A Global Temperature Check Of Finance And Accounting

How Finance Gets Ahead Of The Crisis

How Finance Runs Crisis Performance Management

How Finance Can Create Human Capacity To Survive The Crisis And Beyond

How Finance Can Master Change In Times Of Crisis

Is The Budget Too Big To Fail Even In Crisis Times?

Did We Miss A Golden Opportunity To Change Finance?

For more tips to help you through the crisis you can find more inspirational articles below.

How A LinkedIn Ad Turned Into To 10 Million Dollars

4 Reasons Why No One Implements Best Practices

Why Risk Management Is Supposed To Be Boring

3 Reasons Your Budget Is Already Outdated

How Finance Can Help When Business Is Bad

Who Holds The Key To Successful Cost Savings?

Don't Explain Yesterday, Predict Tomorrow!

Finance Needs A 20/20 View On The Business

Finance People - Adopt A Growth Mindset Or Die!

How Finance Masters Their Working Capital

How Business Partners Keep A Plan On Track

Model Me This. Model Me That. FP&A Can Model You Anything!

If you want to become a better business partner you should consider taking our online course "Business Partnering Explained - Value Creation Unlocked" to get a better handle on the role. It's accredited for 5.5 CPD hours.

Anders Liu-Lindberg is the co-founder, COO (Chief Operating Officer), and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 8,500 members. I have ten years of experience as a business partner at the global transport and logistics company Maersk. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger on LinkedIn with 45.000+ followers.