Speaker Highlight: Ashwini Shankar
We had the pleasure of hearing from Ashwini Shankar CA - CFO at NAATI and Winner of Australian CFO Awards 2024 - ahead of her appearance at World Finance Forum Sydney next week!
In this interview, Ashwini shares her insight on the era of digital transformation that not only puts CFO's at the forefront of streamlining operations, but also opens doors to understanding the power of AI and ML allowing time for the Finance Function to focus their attention on adding value and driving growth.
From understanding the needs of the next generation of finance leaders with new emerging technologies to how she has transformed the Function, this is not one to miss!
Tell us a bit about yourself and how you have ended up where you are today
I’ve had the privilege of building a diverse and dynamic career, which has shaped my expertise in finance and business management. I excelled academically, being one of the state toppers in my bachelor’s degree and went on to become one of the youngest Chartered Accountants in India at that time.
My professional journey began at large multinational companies, including a treasury role in Wipro Technologies, a company with over USD 11 billion in revenue per annum. I also served as the Business Finance Manager for a business unit generating USD 60 million in revenue annually. These roles provided me with a deep understanding of both the macro and micro levels of financial management in large organisations. I also gained invaluable experience in internal audits, statutory and tax audits, capital raising for project finance, and taxation—skills that formed a solid foundation for my career.
After moving to Australia, I continued my education and became a Fellow member of Chartered Accountants of Australia and New Zealand (CAANZ), alongside my membership with ICAI. I then had the opportunity to lead the finance function at Accenture for the Australian Taxation Office’s (ATO) Change Management Program, a $600 million project. Seeking a new challenge, I moved on to manage specialised assets worth over $200 million at the Australian Sports Commission.
Today, I am proud to serve as the CFO at NAATI, where I’ve led the digitisation of the finance function. This effort was well recognised, and I was felicitated with many awards including Australian CFO awards 2022.
"Digitisation of finance function positioned us well to navigate challenges like the economic disruptions caused by COVID, thanks to our cloud-based, integrated infrastructure"
I am excited by the opportunity to contribute further to strategic financial leadership, leveraging my broad experience to drive growth and innovation.
What’s the biggest challenge finance leaders are facing today?
The fact of the matter is CFOs are at the forefront of adopting new technologies to streamline operations and enhance financial reporting. They champion initiatives that leverage technologies like AI, machine learning, and data analytics to transform business processes and actively push for necessary changes in corporate culture. And this in itself is the one of the significant challenges we are facing - cultural resistance.
We must work to cultivate a culture that values agility, continuous learning, and innovation. Automation and digitisation changes the mix of resources you need in your finance team. This involves recruiting individuals with strong analytical, technological, and strategic skills. And also upskilling existing employees to handle new technology. This needs adequate investment in training and development. We need to create corporate cultures based on the understanding that ‘technology is a tool in the hands of experts’.
"Humans should not delegate significant decision-making to machines. Rather, experts should use technology to enhance their decision-making capacity"
The second important challenge is protecting financial data from fraud and cyber threats. As digital transformation accelerates, cybersecurity remains a top priority. Data is the most powerful and at the same time most vulnerable resource at the same time. Protecting sensitive financial data from cyber threats is crucial for maintaining trust and compliance. CFOs must invest in advanced cybersecurity measures, including encryption, multi-factor authentication, regular security audits and employee training on best practices. By prioritising cybersecurity, CFOs can safeguard their organisations against data breaches and financial losses.
What's the biggest change you've seen in finance over the past decade?
The biggest change has been role of technology and how it has changed the way finance teams work.
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With all the automation and digitisation – the role of finance leaders is not just to ensure accuracy of financial transactions. Significant accuracy of financial transactions can now be achieved by having the right systems, setting adequate internal controls, having adequate policies and procedures and quality resources in place. This frees up time and space for the finance leaders to spend their time on value added services. This changes the mix of resources you need in your finance team.
Having a strong accounting background was and is still imperative. But that by itself is not sufficient today. You need to have systems knowledge and business knowledge as well. In some small organisations CFOs are vested with the responsibility of IT as well. Either way it is very important for the CFOs to work closely with the CTO and COOs to help businesses adapt and thrive in this rapidly changing world.
You need to know how the systems and their interfacing works backend and frontend to be able to rely on the numbers coming from them and to set internal controls. I have digitised the finance function which means that there is a complex web of interfacing between the systems. I would not have been able to digitise the finance function if I was not curious enough to step out of my expertise and gain system knowledge.
"A human CFO and AI technology together make a powerful team. Effective CFOs have automated or delegated more traditional aspects of the finance function so they can focus on strategic tasks such as setting corporate strategy, spurring revenue growth, driving data initiatives forward, and staying ahead of evolving risks and regulations"
Where are you on your automation journey, is it a big feature in your work or are you at the beginning?
We have gone through digital transformation and have transformed the finance function in the last few years.
As a high-volume business, I knew one of the keyways to keep the business sustainable in the long run was to have a strategic focus on automation and digitisation.
One of the pivotal strides in our digital transformation journey was automation of 98% of our sales and refund process. Building on this success, we automated:
80% of examiner purchase invoices - Examiner expense is the second main expense after employment cost. And with 80% of examiner expenses automated, a large part of our expenses is automated.
Automation of casual management – We have around 800 casual employees. We automated engagement, management and payment of casual employees through interfacing our onboarding system, rostering system and payroll system.
All these automations have ensured better utilisation of our resource time towards financial planning and analysis instead of processing. It has provided a great opportunity to upskill staff. Increased job satisfaction due to upskilling and enabling career progression has ensured better retention of quality staff. It has also enhanced our reporting capabilities as there is single source of truth due to the interfacing between the systems and our reporting system is able to provide a 360-degree visibility of our business both in terms of finance and operations.
Having said that, digital transformation is an ongoing journey. Automation is one of the areas we will continue to focus on. We will continue to find ways to streamline processes, reduce cost and improve productivity.
If you liked this interview with Ashwini, you'll love the panel she'll be speaking on at World Finance Forum Sydney. Make sure to register for your pass today as there's only a week to go!