The Three E’s of Strategic Finance

Finance must be an integral part of the strategic process, and successful engagement in business strategy requires finance professionals to play key roles—and often lead the process—in three specific ways: education, evaluation, and execution. Education is a key element in strategic finance because it is the bridge between data and insights. Reporting doesn’t always lead to understanding, and sharing information doesn’t always result in actionable insights. In today’s organizations, proactive education about how finance can and should influence business decisions is essential to strategic success. Evaluation involves finance’s analysis of the present reality and possible future. Finance provides future operational plans, capital project analysis, financial markets planning, and execution. Every business strategy relies on timely insights that shape business growth. Finally, execution is the orientations and skills finance professionals possess that are critical to lead strategic execution. Investors who want to diversify their assets and save for their children’s future may explore the website of The Children’s ISA.

 Read More at Strategic Finance Magazine >

A Systems Approach to Navigating Process Complexity

A system, at its most basic, is the interaction of various discrete components or parts. It’s easy enough to visualize and consider each of these parts in isolation; however, business leaders almost always underestimate the difficulty in predicting the outcomes and behavior of the system during the design stage. While the engineering and business fields have developed several methods (including root-cause analysis, scenario planning, etc.) to try to understand and address these issues, they still rely heavily on teams calculating or forecasting outcomes of systems. However, even systems with few elements create outcomes that cannot be calculated or predicted. Modern finance teams have found that leveraging existing technology solutions can increase process visibility and reduce risk. When considering how to approach different problems, key systems-thinking concepts need to be applied – considering that the impact of internal and external factors and changes can help address a challenge more comprehensively and in a timely manner. This approach also allows businesses to become increasingly agile in meting ever-changing customer demand.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

How Compliance and Cost Reduction Efforts Are Shaping Digital Transformation

“Leveraging funding and sponsorship of regulatory and cost reduction initiatives is enabling legacy firms to transform their data capabilities to achieve revenue generation and growth objectives.”

Today’s businesses aspire to be competitive by leveraging their data to drive revenue generation and business growth. To accomplish this, companies that still rely on traditional business models must embark on data-driven digital transformation initiatives. But how do technology and data leaders ensure that non-revenue generating data-driven transformation efforts receive the commitment and funding that are required to sustain these efforts?

Read More at Forbes Magazine >

Software Solutions For The Modern Finance Leader

CFOs today increasingly shape strategy across their organizations, driving long-term growth and performance. But with high volumes of data everywhere they turn, finance leaders are facing major pressure to gain meaningful insights quickly. In today’s digital economy, technology is no longer a luxury or “nice to have”; it’s a “must-have” that sets enterprises apart from the competition by providing a new level of trust and confidence that the data used to support decision making is up-to-date and accurate. Strong finance leaders are not held back by outdated or legacy systems because they are more than likely to have invested in technologies that help them achieve their business goals. With a dependable set of accurate and complete financial statements now a given, the business can get on with effective decision-making, compliance, forecasting, and strategic planning. Business software also provides strong real-time analytics, which can be used to make robust business-wide decisions, further strengthening the role of finance leaders as strategic adviser.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Ignorance is No Longer Bliss for the Businesses Who Ignore Spreadsheet Risk

The urgency of modern data management is increasing for most organizations, yet many struggle with size and complexity and are uncertain about where and how to get started.  Data that is properly governed, timely, secure, and trustworthy lays the foundation that enables the entire organization to leverage the data for valuable insights. However, many C-level executives still make important business decisions based on spreadsheet data alone, which in turn exposes them to major financial risk. With limited tracking and security options, spreadsheets are a tailor-made environment for errors that can go forever undetected. This means that business leaders are running scenarios, calculating costs, and producing reports that are being used to make important decisions with the wrong information. To be successful and ultimately profitable, these businesses must reduce dependence on spreadsheets and invest in a robust and integrated system that can  turn data into answers. 

Read More at CFO Magazine >

How Consumer Products Companies Can Thrive in Digital Transformation

Consumer products organizations are embracing robust technologies to enable their digital transformation goals and to gain greater operational efficiencies and competitive advantages. These tools integrate disparate systems to support a single environment for robust analytics that provide meaning business insights and can ultimately be the difference between success and failure. To be successful, growing consumer products companies should adopt a standardized solution flexible enough to work across multiple organizations to alleviate the struggle of integrating newly acquired businesses. And beyond the ability to integrate new businesses, consumer products companies want to increase their speed to benefit of acquisition integration and implementation.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Drive Business Strategy with Cost Optimization

According to Gartner’s 2018 IT Budget Benchmark for Midsize Enterprises, IT spend represents 3.5% of total business revenue.

“Rather than solely focusing on optimizing those costs, progressive CIOs rethink how technology investments can influence the other 96.5% of spending. CIOs that approach conversations about cost optimization from a strategic investment perspective are better equipped to balance critical business priorities while driving long-term cost savings.”

IT cost optimization isn’t only about cutting costs or identifying new sources of efficiency. It is also about strategic investments oriented around business objectives.

Read More at Gartner >

What Makes a Strategic CFO?

Strategic CFOs harness the power of technology to understand the “why” behind their numbers and use that information to solve complex business challenges faster. They possess the skills to manage rapidly changing technological processes, and they keep up with the ever-changing business landscape of their competitors. As innovations like AI and predictive analytics become more prevalent in finance, successful leaders must ensure their teams build a new skill set – met decision making. Modern CFOs help drive the direction and success of their organization and ensure business decisions are based on solid financial data.

Read More at Forbes Magazine >

Intelligent Technologies Are Revolutionizing Finance In Midsize Businesses

Midsize businesses across virtually every industry are actively adopting new technologies to drive better insights that support business strategy. However, recent IDC research suggests that only 50.2% of best-run midsize companies are supported by finance organizations that understand the power of data when ensuring timeliness, accuracy, and insight. Additionally, the research found that the biggest challenge for best-run midsize companies is the inability to provide timely financial insight relevant to decision makers in other departments across the enterprise. The biggest reason for this is that many finance organizations still subscribe to maintaining a growing inventory of spreadsheets, disconnected data sources, and manually created reports. To remain competitive, these businesses must be proactive about transforming their finance function with technologies that enable long-term growth.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >