Traditionally, the CFO was tasked with the responsibility of planning and steering the organization’s financial journey. Under them, some of the most intensive and complex tasks were executed across different levels or departments in the organization, for example, accounting, statutory compliance, and financial reporting.
But the advent of the digital economy has witnessed a radical re-definition of entire businesses as well as the consumer society at large. The CFO’s role needs a paradigm shift from being focused only on numbers that arrive at his or her desk to playing the key role of asking the business stakeholders about how well they are navigating and bringing revenue in a world where digital stands at the front row.
CFOs of today need to leverage their access to enterprise-wide data to predict business outcomes accurately and this prediction is increasingly being relied upon by businesses in the event of rising uncertainties in the market. Studies have shown that nearly 77% of CFOs believe that they play a key role in driving business-wide operational transformation.
So, the next question that budding business leaders will have on their minds is undoubtedly this – How can a CFO drive digital business process transformation?
They can create an impact primarily through 3 strategic approaches namely:
* Enabling seamless collaboration between the finance function and the rest of the organization
* Promoting agile and flexible finance operations to suit the pace of fast-moving and highly unpredictable market dynamics
* Integrating new technology into finance operations and emphasizing a connected and unified organizational approach to every business opportunity and challenge
Let us explore each of the approaches in detail and see how CFO’s can drive transformational change.

Seamless and Collaborative Finance Function

The first step to driving digital process transformation by the CFO is to enable a seamless and highly efficient collaborative finance function. Every facet of the business needs to be supplied with the right insights by the finance team to help them manage their targets, set budgets, plan for expansion, and foster new innovations.

Traditionally the CFO and the finance function were seen as a gatekeeper of budgets and were perceived as obstacles or resistance for other functions in getting their objectives realized through smooth fund flow. While the finance team was doing their duty on managing budgets, the overall sentiments were more towards the negative side as very often they lacked in-depth insight on how a particular departmental objective was to drive value for the business. This resulted in them considering the request as a mere budget line item.

However, the modern CFO role is very different and takes a completely strategic role of being the facilitator of change for every other organizational function. By collaborating with every department, the CFO and team are able to rightly gauge the future of new objectives and proposals. Through deep data analytics and predictive business models, they have a clear understanding of the larger picture. This prevents them from obstructing innovations and even better, empowers them with the right financial muscle for faster value realization.

Getting the team to be responsive

The CFO today has the responsibility to break down silos and obstructive processes within the finance function to ensure that it is universally flexible and agile. In the face of dynamic market conditions, several business units may have to undergo radical transformations. As finance forms a key pillar of the transformation, the CFO must ensure that there is enough agility in the financial framework of the business to adapt to the changing needs. New revenue streams may be popping up in a matter of days or existing ones may close down even faster to give way for a new one. The finance function needs to have an accommodative and expansive framework for accounting, revenue realization, reconciliation, audits, and compliance to regulatory policies. For example, a business moving from a traditional one-time high-value sales model to a long-term continuous revenue stream through subscription sales requires the underlying finance function to move at the same pace and manage the back-end processing and enable a smooth customer experience.

Growing the digital landscape

While the CFO transitions into a key driver for digital process transformation, they can no longer be dependent on traditional business forecasting and budgeting tools. The CFO is responsible for onboarding the latest digital platforms for the finance function to equip it with the data, insights, and processing speed to help the business move further in the digital economy.

By transforming their operations internally through data-driven digital systems and automation, the CFO can nurture a successful roadmap to help the business navigate the digital realm seamlessly. The CFO also needs to ensure that every technology they bring in can be seamlessly integrated with the organization’s digital landscape to ensure that there is effortless data flow and connected insight generation for better predictive power.

Modern-day CFO’s have the capacity at their disposal to drive changes within the entire business. By analyzing the influx of data from across the business, they can rightly determine how the business needs to adapt to today’s digital business landscape. Getting them the right digital platforms is the key objective of decision-makers, and the rest can be easily handled by them.