Are You Ready to Be a Tech-Savvy CFO?

Your business is changing. Your market is changing. Even the macro-economy is changing. The question is: Are you changing?

For today’s finance leaders, adapting to this new environment is no longer optional. In many instances, the tools, strategies, methods, and tried-and-true metrics you’ve used to run a top-notch finance organization and forge a successful career—well, they might not be what you need to move forward. So are you content with the status quo, or are you ready to embrace a new role: change agent?

Externally, your markets are pressing you to be faster, smarter, and nimbler. That means using technology to create customer-centric business models. Internally, you need a modern financial infrastructure, faster and more insightful analyses, and the ability to adapt and adopt modern metrics that reflect rapidly emerging business trends and realities. The tremendous resumé you’ve carefully assembled over the years likely isn’t as robust as you need it to be. That’s because, as the CFO’s responsibilities evolve, technology is playing an increasingly prominent role. CFOs are being called upon to deliver answers that are inescapably dependent on modern, innovative technology.

Many of the fundamental assumptions and methodologies that corporate finance has rightly trusted and relied on for decades are undergoing radical, transformative change, and the role of the chief financial officer will never be the same.

The new mandate for CFOs: new rules, new tools

For CFOs, it’s no longer about just debits and credits, and yet another spreadsheet. Today, you need to be part analyst, part strategist, part futurist, part collaborator—and all business. You want to be the leader who can modernise and transform business systems and operations to improve productivity. And, you want to be the leader who can adapt to the new rules and the new tools to keep the company ahead of the competition.

Are you ready? You’ll need a complete rethink of your financial and technology infrastructure, because shifting business strategies are rewriting the ways companies execute their financial processes and operations. In this new world, you’ll need to:

• Analyse exponentially greater volumes of data
• Embrace the power of social media, mobile users, and cloud computing
• Tap into unlimited and ubiquitous connectivity
• Capitalise on sophisticated databases and analytics
• Adopt new metrics for operations and valuations

In other words, you need to be a tech-savvy CFO.

But even if you don’t have in-depth tech fluency (and few CFOs do), it’s still essential to have some basic knowledge about how technology can positively impact your company—how it can provide competitive differentiation, improve finance’s productivity, open up strategic opportunities, and ensure a healthier bottom line. Let’s quickly review how you can start to make that happen.

The techs-savvy CFO: a profile

In an information-centric era, the pace of business is faster than ever. Disruptive cycles—driven by innovation and analytical insights—happen with greater frequency and amplitude—this puts the CFO squarely in the crosshairs. But the onslaught of
technology that creates this chaos is also the key to success. Here’s what will help today’s CFO step up to the next level.

Embrace automation

If your finance team is hampered by manual processes, you end up needing more people who do less work using bad data to create faulty reports. But if you’re looking to be that future-ready CFO, it’s time to get your head out of your spreadsheets and break the vicious circle of inaccurate data, lengthy closing cycles, and delayed decisions that lack a fuller context.

A tech-savvy CFO embraces automation to streamline the mundane tasks and devote time and resources to the higher value, strategic activities. Technology keeps the bad things from happening and avoids the endless cycles of tactical tasks.
The tech-savvy CFO makes informed decisions that drive profit creating business activities instead of acting as gatekeeper and number cruncher. Think of technology as the guardrails on the road that let you drive faster with your eyes focused on the future with greater confidence that you can avoid the crashes. Automate the accounting, recordkeeping, and report generation… and the strategic visibility will follow.

Take it to the cloud—with security

In the eyes of many, the capital and operating costs of on premises software are inexorably leading it to the dustbin of corporate technology. Given the many headaches of monolithic software and multiyear implementation and update cycles, it’s easy to conclude that “playing it safe” is no longer equivalent to “playing it smart.” The status quo itself is a risk.

But being a tech-savvy CFO also means having the ability to resist rushing into strategic decisions until all the facts are in. Yes, cloud computing is attractive, but you want to be sure you’re armed with all of facts about the risks and benefits of cloud solutions before making rational, informed decisions….

Read more in the whitepaper below.

The way forward

As an accredited and awarded Sage Intacct reseller, we view our clients’ success as our own and are dedicated to helping them find their way forward. Offering ongoing support, training, and resources ensures that our clients maximise the benefits of Sage Intacct and stay abreast of the ever-evolving business landscape.

Having implemented Sage Intacct for many businesses in ANZ across diverse industries, our experience spans areas such as Software and SaaS, Family Offices, Non-profit Organisations, Financial Services, NDIS and Human Services and many other industries.

Email us at Akuna Solutions for a free consultation and explore with a Sage Intacct implementation specialist how to leverage modern technology available today to future-proof your business operations.