Financial professionals, and CFOs especially, are experiencing significant changes in their roles due to the rapid evolution and adaptation of technology. CFO’s need to continually review the latest business software tools and solutions in how they impact their business.
In this blog, I want to address three important questions regarding the changing role of finance and its adaptation to this era:
- How is the role changing?
- How can Microsoft Dynamics 365 be the foundation to accelerate and better adapt to the change?
- How we, a business software consulting practice, address those changes to create business value?
Let us start right away!
1. The Changing Role of CFO
Many drivers are catalysts for financial role changes; a few are cloud technology, processed analytics, RPA (Robotics Process Automation) and blockchain. Financial professionals need to better understand how these changes impact their team and company and combine it with human analysis, creativity, and empathy to bring significant improvement.
Automation has eliminated manual and repetitive tasks, so CFOs have stopped isolated work to focus on management and data analysis responsibilities that guide the company into beneficial decisions and insights. Working with the CEO, the CFO now must bring his or her unique visualization of the company to guide and influence others through rational, measured, evidence-based decision-making.
The company judges the financial professional on how well they adapt to technology, develop strategies for success, value creation, and impact on the company. The following figures from the CGMA report about the changing role of the CFO shows new responsibilities.
The reporting task must raise questions and commercial curiosity to identify opportunities for innovation and risk reduction while establishing strong communication with the team that leads to the root causes of issues and opportunities.
The following image of the McKinsey report shows specific areas where the CFO brings value to the company:
2. Microsoft Dynamics 365 as a Foundation for Improvement
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the foundation, not the end. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the perfect ERP for adapting to the changing CFO role. Its process and data unification bring significant insights that help the CFO to meet his or her analytic requirements. Other systems can be integrated to further gather data, and added applications optimize data processing and generate easy-to-read dashboards.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 can perfectly work with business intelligence, process automation, and most importantly, is a cloud-based ERP, which means cost savings, no IT architecture, better security (As we talked about in How Secure is Dynamics 365 Cloud?), and collect essential data faster and cheaper.
In this era, when the CFO role is becoming a key role in reaching objectives and making important decisions to improve business, the need for a robust well-versed solution is crucial to meet those requirements and bring business value.
3. How We Bring Business Value
Well, I know I said that Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the best to achieve objectives. However, it is even more important to understand what you want to get from a solution and how do you want to work. We usually run a diagnostic with the client and determine whether Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the right ERP for them or not. Once everything is clear, and both teams are aligned, we proceed to focus on bringing business value.
While working with you, we define a business strategy based on the company’s future vision and not only offer the implementation and configuration that will help you meet that future vision, but also teach you how to use at its fullest and get the most of it to quickly achieve those goals.
To summarize, the professional finance roles, especially the CFOs, are changing into a protagonist role, where your decisions significantly impact the company, for that reason, it is crucial to count with a robust ERP, like Microsoft Dynamics 365, capable of providing a faster adaptation rate and also facilitate the analytical requirements that the CFO must meet.
Thank you for reading this blog! I hope it helped you addressed the CFO role changes.
If you want to learn more about Microsoft Dynamics 365, please click here.