siliconindia | | April 20219NEW OPPORTUNITIES AND NEW CHALLENGESNew business realities have made the need for reliable and faster insights from CFOs. However, shackled by legacy technology and lack of knowledge about them, have led to CFOs not being able to take up new responsibilities. CFOs are facing pressure from both sides as they cannot draw exhaustive data from old systems and cannot make a business case to replace legacy systems with new cloud applications. So, what is the way out? Do CFOs need to become technology experts as well? The answer is `no'. All they need to do is to understand the impact and consequences of adoption vs non-adoption of modern technologies. They need to master "the art of the possible", to understand the value addition done by digitalization. AUTOMATION COMES TO RESCUECFOs will never be able to focus on developing new skills if they don't have time, and for most, governance duties crowd their schedules. Making sure every report is in its place, especially with old applications, is incredibly time-consuming. Today most CFOs feel that core financial aspects like compliance and control take up a significantly large chunk of their time. Automation is the answer to this challenge, which creates the bandwidth and capabilities needed by the finance function to perform at a larger role. Cloud-based finance applications like ERP Cloud, have tremendous power to automate time-consuming data gathering, reconciling, matching, and other tasks. When supplemented with built-in machine learning, these applications can automate finance processes with minimal human intervention. This frees up the finance team to focus on providing high value, strategic guidance that business demands.Automation also is key to providing forward-looking business guidance because it enables the integration of large sets of data--financial and non-financial --that are needed for comprehensive predictive analysis. For example, CFOs can leverage strategic modeling solutions that combines a set of rich financial forecasting and modeling features and build scenario analysis and modeling capabilities. CFOs can drive course corrections by re-setting targets, evaluating financial impact analysis, and present focused financial information for informed decision making.CREATE HISTORY ­ NOT REPORT ITOnce CFOs have complete clarity on digital possibilities, opportunities, customers' needs and modern finance applications, they will have the knowledge and tools for providing strategic guidance and influence future direction. They can be truly partnered with their counterparts within the organization and drive it towards achieving their collective goals. Traditionally, CFOs most often come into picture when the action is over to report about it. However, with the right skills and technology, CFOs can contribute in developing the narrative rather than just reporting it afterwards. New business realities have made the need for reliable and faster insights from CFOs
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