Transforming your finance function

This requires ongoing investment in new technologies, processes and skillsets in the finance function to ensure it’s well positioned to spearhead business efficiency and value creation.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath may have already been a catalyst for significant short-term change in the operations and structure of your finance function. But what about the medium and longer term?

As the economy continues to strengthen, you’ll also need a strong and creative finance team to achieve your company’s strategic goals. We’ve identified three key areas – technology, process and people – to focus your finance recalibration, or indeed, its complete transformation.

Driving efficiencies with the right technology

Contemporary businesses require a coherent IT strategy, secure enterprise architecture, and efficient financial management processes. Smarter and faster is technology’s promise – and CFOs and financial controllers are taking the lead on boosting business productivity by introducing flexibility into their finance systems.

A non-negotiable for any business seeking to realise improved efficiencies is automating simple and routine tasks such as data entry and reporting. However, first-wave automations, such as robotic process automation (RPA) of back-office tasks, are just that – foundational requirements for modern-day business operations.

The next stage is end-to-end digitisation of core finance processes and data capture – a challenging task for businesses with a patchwork of legacy systems and IT solutions.

Improved broadband technology has seen more organisations adopt cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to integrate and organise data needed for front and back-office operations. This is critical for organisational resilience and improved business analysis and insights.

Advances in computing capability, data aggregation, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are also transforming business processes and models by unlocking efficiencies in more complex areas of finance such as financial planning, reporting and audit.

Machine learning algorithms and analytics are now being used to monitor company financial and business continuity risks. Natural language generation (NLG) – which converts structured data into text – is being used to automate reporting, freeing up employees to spend more time on financial analysis and strategy.

However, with any new IT solution, research is required to determine its cost-effectiveness and ability to integrate with existing systems, as well as its intended – and potentially unintended – impacts on business processes and people.

Re-engineering processes for improved outcomes

Integrating new automations shouldn’t be done in isolation. They belong in a considered and comprehensive transformational strategy that also accounts for future automations on the horizon.

Automations create efficiencies. They also contribute to standardised end-to-end processes such as record-to-report and procure-to-pay. Having a strong financial process management system goes hand-in-hand with automation.

Process mapping allows clear visibility of the tasks and people responsible for them. Efficient processes backed by streamlined workflows reduce fragmentation, duplication and stress while improving cohesion, productivity and role clarity. They also inspire confidence in the data captured by the business, and the performance analysis and insights produced by the finance team.

CEOs and Boards are increasingly demanding faster, more fine-grained data-led insights and real-time scenario modelling from their finance teams and being backed by a strong, efficient process helps produce impactful results.

Developing a future-focused finance team

Your businesses’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic may have altered the size and structure of your finance team, as well as its skills mix. Are you still operating with these emergency settings in place? Do you have the right people in the right roles to take your business forward?

As Australia’s talent squeeze continues, securing and retaining talent will be critical. While qualified accountants remain a central fixture of the finance team, the team’s skills base is diversifying to include people who can analyse and interpret complex digital data, or skilled in areas like machine learning, AI and business processes.

CEOs are looking for tech and data-savvy leaders to manage and staff their finance functions. In the current competitive job market, upskilling existing staff may be the most efficient way to expand capability in your finance team. Outsourcing specialist roles or using shared services could also be a cost-effective fit for your business.

If you haven’t already, now would also be a good time to reach out to your colleagues in Human Resources and Technology to discuss more creative ways to expand and deepen your talent pool.