The touchless Finance Function - is it really possible?
Anders Liu-Lindberg
Leading advisor to senior Finance and FP&A leaders on creating impact through business partnering | Interim | VP Finance | Business Finance
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A huge proportion of many organizations' person-hours are now dedicated to what we might describe as removing friction.
Friction comes in many forms and is present in every business process or customer interaction, and it has real impacts. The classic example is sub-optimal UX leading to shopping cart abandonment, but the principle applies almost universally - including, of course, in the Finance Function.
Removing ourselves from the equation
Removing friction is another way to describe the work of creating more efficient processes. In the case of the Finance Function, this means identifying the processes that can be automated, designing robust systems that enable the safe and accurate production of information and instituting self-service practices that open up data to relevant stakeholders without the need for human gatekeepers.
By adopting this model we can not only remove bottlenecks and enable other parts of the business to make decisions more quickly, but we can also free up our own time to capture more of the value chain.
Driving value, hands-free
The process for achieving the touchless (or 'contactless', or perhaps even 'hands-free') Finance Function can be split into three stages.
1. Let the machines produce the data. Instead of wasting person-hours on work that can be easily done by software, let's invest time in designing robust processes and systems to enable the automated production of information. Build solid systems, and let the machines do the grunt work.
2. Go self-service by default. Information wants to be free - and that is especially the case when it comes to business-critical data of the sort produced within the Finance Function. It makes zero sense to have an artificial gatekeeping layer made up of Finance professionals whose days are taken up generating reports for stakeholders. Instead, we should adopt the principle of self-service: data should be available to those who need it, in the format they want, through centralized software portals with sympathetically-designed and easily accessible interfaces.
3. Fulfil Finance's potential for facilitation. Once we've designed our bulletproof automated processes and opened access to the data, we can get down to the real work of the modern Finance Function: generating value by facilitating better decisions. Now that we're no longer tied up in generating reports, we can use our holistic knowledge of our organizations to produce new insights and help leaders make impactful choices. In this way, Finance takes up its rightful position in both the engine room and the co-driver's seat.
Remain mindful
Automation and related technologies can yield extraordinary, incomparable dividends - but only if we use them intelligently.
The importance of process design cannot be overstated. If we are going to entrust key work to software, then we must be sure that we understand what that software is doing and why. We need to be able to trust and validate the data it is producing, and we need to build some degree of flexibility into our systems to ensure that they can respond to changing organizational needs.
Is it possible to create the touchless Finance Function? Absolutely! Technology is available it's just about finding the right ways to deploy it. Don't agree? Try to convince me otherwise in the comments.
In the next couple of articles in this series, I'll be looking at the tenets of automation, and the work that needs to be done to get your processes ready. Make sure you subscribe to get them as soon as they're published.
This was the fourth article in my new series "The Finance Function of the Future". You can read the previous articles below.
While you await future articles you can read my latest series about the "Data to impact journey" below.
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Anders Liu-Lindberg ?is the co-founder and a partner at?Business Partnering Institute ?and the owner of the largest?group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering ?on LinkedIn with more than 11,000 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 125,000+ followers and close to 210,000 subscribers to my blog. I am also an advisory board member at?Born Capital ?where I help identify and grow the next big thing in?#CFOTech . Finally, I'm a member of the board of directors at?PACE - Profitability Analytics Center of Excellence ?where I support the development of new analytics frameworks that can improve profitability in companies around the world.
Product Marketing Manager at OneStream Software
1 年That first point, letting the machines produce quality data that frees up the analysts to do analysis, is such a relevant point to my own finance experience! I left my finance job after becoming frustrated that I couldn’t be an analyst in my role because I was a glorified Excel jockey, constantly wrangling data into Excel, and never left with the time to do my job. Having technology that can provide quality data is so important! Another great article, thanks for this Anders!
That was a blast. See you next time…
1 年This is all inevitable. The biggest challenge is that it takes totally different people in the Finance Function to those that were traditionally attracted to the Department.
EVP Business Engagement & Growth @ AICPA | High-Performance Training & Strategic Partnerships
1 年Anders, great post and we have been tracking this. I recall a recent Gartner survey that said 52%of CFOs predict this within next 3-6 years! Puts the exclamation ??on moving to #valuepartner in #financeandaccounting. Thank you for continuing to raise the bar!
Agile Finance Lead with a strong focus on turning business insights into right decision making.
1 年What an interresting article dear Anders! Most of the companies are almost there (atleast those who have the capability to finance such solutions). Today, things are moving too fast and Finance organization must quickly adapt and one of the best way is to becoming an hybrid function (part human and part digital). We're requested to povide our business leaders with insights for right and quick decision taking rather than reports and data only as in the past.
Finance Professional with 10+ experience in Finance, FP&A, Financial reporting, Managerial accounting, Management, Banking, FinTech, E-commerce, B2B, IFRS, KPI, Budgeting, Controlling
1 年Good article. Collection, primary processing according to predetermined algorithms and convenient visualization of information is a matter for automated contactless processes. But the interpretation of this information, its analysis and the adoption of business decisions based on it is a matter of man.