What Will Your Finance Department Look Like in The Future?

If you’re a CFO, or if you aim to be a CFO in the future, what will your Finance function look like in 5 or 10 years time?

Perhaps you think this is one of those articles telling you to get ready for the rise of the robots and the AI revolution. Maybe you think I’m going to warn you all to retrain because accountants are going to be automated and irrelevant.

But, no, it’s not. I hope you’re not too disappointed!

The truth is that your Finance function will look the way you make it, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

Your decisions and actions as a leader will determine what your Finance function ends up like.

A lot of people gravitate to articles about the Finance function of the future because they want the crystal ball view of how things will turn out, so that they can be ready.

But what they forget is that we have choices. Why are we so pathetic as to just go with the flow, like we don’t get to choose? People talk as if automation and AI are inevitable. They’re not! No way! To implement automation and AI, we have to decide to implement it! It doesn’t happen like one day we open our laptop and suddenly we don’t have any work to do because the computer’s already done it.

Given that’s the case, we’d better take note of who is predicting the onslaught of automation and AI as the big-ticket future trends in Finance – oh yeah, it’s the software writers, app developers and their buddies, the consultants!

Now, before I go too far along the anti-technology road, which is actually not my intention, I want to just say what my point is.

My main point is that we’re far, far too ready to accept someone else’s vision for the future of Finance. The truth is that the future of the Finance function will largely be determined by us, the current and future leaders of Finance teams.

Are you a Finance leader who doesn’t lead?

The problem is that we Finance leaders don’t do enough thinking of our own. We have no vision. Let me give you examples from my personal experience.

I once did a keynote speech in front of 100 CFOs at a conference. I asked them to put their hands up if they had created a strategy for Finance with the same rigour and process as their business strategy had been developed.

Only about 5 people raised their hands! If that’s representative, that means that only 5% of Finance teams have a strategy that has been properly developed, end-to-end.

What do I mean by “properly developed”?

I mean that the strategy development process should go through the standard simple steps, starting (as Covey would say) with the end in mind. It all starts with the vision and mission.

But, is that what we see?

When I asked one CFO what his vision for Finance transformation was, he said that a) he didn’t want to talk about “transformation”, because it raised expectations of something big, and b) he didn’t like “consultant-speak”!

I asked another CFO what his vision for Finance was, and he said that he just wanted the transformation program to get going and we’d “come back to the vision-y kind of things later, because obviously they’re really, er, important”.

It seems that Finance is full of leaders that don’t know where we’re going!

Towards more entrepreneurial Finance

And yet that’s not what successful business leaders and entrepreneurs are like.

Take, for example, Tom Watson, an early CEO at IBM, who oversaw its early huge growth phase.

Someone asked him what the secret of their success was.

And rather than dismiss the question as silly, he replied as if it was something he and the management had reflected on quite a bit.

He said, step one was to “work out what the ‘done business’ looks like. What will it look like when it’s done? How will we know we’ve arrived and completed building the business we wanted to build?”

Step two was to “describe how that ‘done business’ would act.”

Step three, crucially, was this:

“Then I realized that if I ever wanted to have that done business, if we ever wanted to achieve those results, we didn’t just need to have a clear picture of the done business. We didn’t just need to know how that done business would act... If there was any chance ... that this was ever going to happen, I realised one thing…

“We would need to act that way.”

The problem with our non-strategic approach to Finance is that our results – our future – will be in alignment with the way we act now (and in the future). If we’re not intentional about it, we don’t actually know where we’ll end up.

The only way to know where we’re going is to decide where we’re going. And then to align our culture, policies, transformation programs, technology, processes, etc, with that vision.

And that means we have to have a vision of “the done Finance function”. It’s not consultant-speak, or meaningless jargon. It’s not something to be done later. It’s essential to taking your Finance function forward to be what you need it to be.

What do we need Finance to be?

Of course, that still leaves the question of what the vision should be. What do we need Finance to be?

What are you thinking?

You should be the one doing the thinking. We shouldn’t be led by software vendors and app developers. Think for yourself.

And the key question for the Finance vision is “what does the business need from us?”

That’s going to be quite different for each business. And we should never do our functional strategic thinking in isolation from the business strategy.

The “done Finance function” will be related to “the done business”, to use Tom Watson’s terminology.

I saw a great example at a large English Premier League soccer/football club, about 5 years ago, when they were doing well if they achieved 7th or 8th place. I spoke to their senior Finance leaders about their Finance transformation programme. And they explained that the vision for the club was (I may not quote this exactly right) “Champions League ready in 5 years”. And then they explained that the challenge had been given to every area of the club, including Finance and the other support functions – what does it mean to be “Champions League ready”?

(Incidentally, if you don’t know what the “Champions League” is, it’s the highest level competition for European soccer clubs, and you only get to join the competition if you finish in one of the top positions in the top league in your country. Basically, it’s a big deal, and financially lucrative.)

The point is that the vision for the “done Finance function” was completely driven from the concept of the “done business” – “Champions League ready in 5 years”. From that point it was a simple case of working out what that looked like more specifically for Finance (people, processes and systems, etc), and making the plan to get there.

What kind of CFO are you going to be?

So, what kind of CFO are you going to be, either now or in the future? Are you going to be a leader who doesn’t really lead anyone anywhere? Or, are you going to be a leader who provides vision that ties in with the business vision and strategy?

I’ll always be really happy to talk this through with you if you need help with it.

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About the Author – Andy Burrows

I’m Andy Burrows , and I’m Founder and CEO of Supercharged Finance , a provider of online learning and coaching, aimed at helping Finance professionals get better at helping the businesses they work for.

I qualified as a chartered accountant in the UK, and have worked for more than 25 years as a senior Finance professional in a variety of businesses of different sizes and sectors.

I’m now a popular writer in Finance and Accounting. In 2019 Anders Liu-Lindberg described me as one of the "Top voices on LinkedIn for Finance, accounting and FP&A". And in 2024 I was given official LinkedIn Top Voice status (see the little blue badge on my profile !)

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