Traditionally, the role of the enterprise CFO stuck mostly to what’s indicated by the title – managing the financial decisions of the organization. Recent events, including the COVID-19 pandemic and explosion of big data, have necessitated an interconnected organizational structure to remain nimble in a digital world. As the various functions within the enterprise became more intertwined, the CFO role expanded in breadth. CFOs now need to spearhead the analysis of business data from a multitude of sources to not only support financial prowess, but effective cross-functional decision making. This requires a strong data & analytics foundation to ultimately transform vast troves of data into actionable insights. The modern CFO excels in their role through strategically supporting data & analytics initiatives, working closely alongside IT and other functional departments across the enterprise.
Key Benefits of a Companywide Data & Analytics Transformation
In the pandemic environment, organizations came under intense pressure to swiftly adapt to a digital workforce and leverage an increasingly vast sea of internal and external data to make decisions more efficiently and intelligently. These forces put CFOs in a unique position to gain a leg up on competitors; by bringing in new resources, training their teams, and utilizing external consultants, they can greatly accelerate their transformation to a data-driven decision organization. Such organizations enable revenue growth, customer engagement, operational excellence, and cost takeout against a backdrop of unprecedented change.
One of the salient benefits of effective financial analytics is the ability to anticipate challenges and opportunities, making decisions proactively to capitalize on the latter while minimizing the risks associated with the former. This approach also improves risk analysis and management within procurement, something especially relevant today with supply chains under substantial strain. Because procurement is dependent on numerous connections between the business and external entities, there are more previously-unknown risks which are elucidated through effective analytics. Additionally, spend analysis and vendor management decisions are supported by companywide actionable insights, improving operational efficiency and targeted cost takeout.
While the changes of the past several years have created novel challenges, the wise enterprise CFO reframes these as opportunities to capitalize on the benefits of a data-driven decision organization, one which thrives in a digital world and is built to withstand the vicissitudes of the years and decades to come.
