DECEMBER 20188LEADING TRENDS IN 2018FINANCE By Sambasivan G, Chief Financial Officer, Tata Sky Ltd.A PGDM degree holder from IIM ­ Ahmedabad, Sambasivan G has handled senior roles across finance and general management division and has been instrumental in transforming projects and building successful teams throughout his careers.IN MY OPINIONFinance as a function, in my view, is becoming more and more invisible and I will explain how. The role of the finance head in the beginning of the millennium was still around being the gatekeeper with a touch of business partnering. That is completely transformed now. The CFO is now expected to be not only the business partner but also the enabler of the long term strategy along with being a quintessential agent of transformation across the entire organization. The world is moving towards digital. The organizations have no choice but to follow. The cycle time of the advent of new technologies is also crashing. The customers are becoming more impatient. Acceleration is becoming the norm. In such a scenario, the role of Finance in 2018 has to be commensurate with the changing needs both internally and externally.Here I wish to talk about a few areas where Technology plays a major role in helping this transition.RPA: Though robotic process automation has been in vogue for the past decade, the speed of deployment has picked up in the last couple of years. It is now being increasingly used in multiple processes within finance. Savings of the order of 40 percent consistently is not unheard of. I have personal experience of deploying bots across payment processes,
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