The digital transformation of business is already underway on a global worldwide scale. A survey by Gartner, which took place in May of this year, showed that the priorities of CEOs are increasingly shifting toward digital business. At least 60% of companies plan to increase their IT spending in 2018, with the implementation of digital initiatives and digital business transformation in the first place.
Members of the ACPM academy constantly communicate with business representatives and also see that more and more companies choose the path of digitalization of processes to remain competitive. But there are still internal limits to this growth, and the biggest of them is the lack of qualified employees in companies capable of carrying out these changes, including in financial departments.
Financial managers can no longer remain at a distance from transformation in companies, because they manage most of the resources that feed such initiatives. According to a McKinsey study released in July, CEOs and business owners increasingly want finance departments to provide real-time data-driven decision-making support and start using digital technologies for financial tasks. And also to collaborate more with the team and identify in advance the processes that will benefit the most from digitalization and need investment.
Therefore, digital financial management is already modern for every CFO. What are the first tools managers should master to lead digital initiatives?
The digitization of financial services can start with the protection and processing of business data, because financial services are the custodians of important information that is needed to create financial forecasts and support strategic decisions of senior management.
Industry experts highlight 3 areas of technology that can currently be effective in finance:
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automation and robotization of processes to increase their efficiency;
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advanced analytics for financial and business operations, which will allow to accelerate decision-making and search for growth opportunities;
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data visualization, which will provide end users with access to important information in real time and allow for effective business management.
Digitizing all tasks in the financial service at once is unlikely to succeed, so it is better to start with a small pilot project, and during the implementation of technologies, set control points to track intermediate results. And for this, financial managers will have to not only master digital technologies, but also apply project management methods that can facilitate the digitalization of all areas of the company's activities.
