Harvard Business Review: Why Is It So Hard to Become a Data-Driven Company?

“To compete today, companies need to be data-driven. But for mainstream, legacy companies, that’s easier said than done. Despite a decade of investment and the adoption of Chief Data Officers, this survey of Fortune 1000 senior executives finds that many companies are still struggling against not just legacy tech, but embedded cultures that are resistant to new ways of doing things.”

Read More at Harvard Business Review >

Forbes: From Bookkeeper To Business Leader: How Finance Pros Shape Strategy And Culture

“The finance profession has evolved from a singular focus on financial reporting to a strategic role in helping advance core business goals and reacting to seismic challenges. The Covid-19 crisis has illustrated and arguably accelerated this trend, especially as it concerns risk mitigation, supply chain management and radically re-orienting corporate strategy amidst one of the biggest global crises of our time.”

Read More at Forbes >

CFO Magazine: Five Lessons for CFOs As We Approach 2021

“Cutting expenses in a defensive and reactive posture can have unintended consequences. Instead, create “what if” scenarios now and plan allocations for each. If the time comes, you can respond with a thoroughly vetted plan.”

Read More at CFO Magazine >

CFO Magazine: Metric of the Month: Time Allocation in Finance

“The consequences of not spending time wisely underscore the importance of working toward an appropriate balance that helps drive the business forward. It’s incumbent on companies — finance teams in particular — to have an honest look in the mirror and recognize their own inefficiencies in these areas. Working to address them, as many companies have done with transaction processing, leaves more time for investment in more value-added activities.”

Read More at CFO Magazine >

CFO Journal: At Genpact Strategy Teams With Finance to Adapt to Market Shifts

“Pre-pandemic, there was a lot of customer interest in new ERP implementations and full-scale digital transformations. Now, with resources constrained by the crisis, our client conversations are more about services that layer on top of existing ERP and on outsourcing different pieces of finance that they don’t view as core to running their business. These shifts have meant significantly changing how we go to market.”

Read More at WSJ >

Robert Kugel on LinkedIn: Value-Based Planning Improves Corporate Performance

“Value-based planning, in my context, is an approach to corporate planning and budgeting that integrates operational planning and financial budgeting; a forward-looking exercise that incorporates “things” not just money. Things like headcount, kilowatt hours used, less-than-truckload shipments, invoices processed and so on. This is more effective because, for one, those responsible for a business unit think about their requirements and objectives mainly in terms of things they need to achieve and the things they use to achieve those objectives. Money is an abstraction of those things.”

Read More on LinkedIn >

CFO Dive: 4 cost management mistakes for CFOs to avoid in 2021

Gartner analysts highlighted four of the most common mistakes CFOs make as they narrow their focus on cost optimization amid a prolonged economic downturn:

1. Making blanket cuts with unrealistic targets
2. Failing to sustain behavior change
3. Slowing down the organization
4. Choking off innovation

Read More at CFO Dive >

SF Magazine: Change Your Approach to Finance Strategy

“We used to spend a lot of time analyzing historical data to in­form business planning; we’ve now switched to a predictive approach to financial planning, looking at a wider range of key indicators such as sales pipeline data. This allows finance professionals to help senior management project what’s likely to happen and make better decisions through the use of real-time data.”

Read more at SF Magazine >

SF Magazine: Considerations in Data Analytics Problem Structuring

There are three key elements that should be in place before kicking off a data analytics project – understand the real need, understand the users, and understand the problem complexity.

Read more at SF Magazine >