The evolution of the CFO

By Mark Preston, Senior Consultant and Subject Matter Expert for Finance Solutions and External Affairs UK&I at Dun & Bradstreet

Although the CFO role has adapted and changed over time, the pandemic has altered it for good – and there’s no going back. In less than a month of the pandemic starting in 2020, CFOs had to create entire new strategies and plans to allow businesses to maintain their stability throughout the upheaval of COVID-19. And while the worst effects of the pandemic have eased, the majority of these plans have stayed in place, and others have evolved to meet new customer demands.

Today, it’s no longer just about cash flow management, understanding performance, financial reporting, safeguarding assets, and financial planning and analysis. The complexities of ever-evolving business operating environments changed that. Now, a CFO’s role encompasses more tasks and considerations, including the likes of technology investment and risk responsibility, making the role much more complex.

Yet despite ongoing change, a CFO’s job does not have to be more difficult or strenuous.

Quicker decisions

One key learning that finance leaders should take away from the past 24 months, is the importance of being able to make fast, accurate business decisions.

In fact, a study from Dun & Bradstreet highlighted that 76% of CFOs said the role of the finance team would expand from core accountancy-based functions to include advanced digital and data analysis. In today’s digital revolution where big data plays a massive role, CFOs should consider how the best of human and machine intelligence can improve business performance.

Although, before anything else, CFOs need to know how they should best integrate effective technologies, as well as when the moment is right to invest in digital solutions that are evolving so quickly.

Strategies to manage your data

Finance leaders and CFOs cited in a Dun & Bradstreet survey that they pursued automation of tasks over the past year as one of their primary responses to COVID-19-related economic disruption. It’s clear progress is being made. Yet this approach must continue in a post-COVID era; leaders that use technology efficiently and effectively will be those that can reconcile their expanding workloads for the entire finance department.

That said, the same CFOs and finance leaders surveyed also stated that managing data is one of their most significant challenges. A noteworthy 47% suggested that the biggest challenge is using data to generate insights with minimal manual work. This points directly back to the inextricable relationship between data quality and automation capability. So, what needs to change?

Moving forward, CFOs and finance teams, with even the help of technology professionals such as CTOs, must find the most effective solutions for managing data for automation to help the finance department manage workloads. This includes integrating data from disparate sources, maintaining secure customer records, streamlining payments, and using better technological solutions such as data analytics and analytic rigor.

Managing risk

The importance of generating insights that help finance leaders improve forecasting capabilities and manage various risks — such as macroeconomic and credit risk – became extremely prevalent during the pandemic. Thankfully, for businesses with data analytics implemented across the business effectively, CFOs could much better evaluate risk: the task that falls under their remit more often than ever before.

Today, in fact, nearly 80% of CFOs are now directly or indirectly responsible for enterprise risk management – including internal and external risk. Admittedly, this task – combined with growing risks – can be demanding. Although through technologies, which includes the likes of artificial intelligence and machine learning, CFOs can better identify risks much faster, for example, a high-risk supplier.

These consistent risk assessments and decisions are increasingly important in today’s climate of uncertain environments – such as the pandemic and Brexit. Looking to innovative technologies to help relieve these difficulties will not only give finance departments more opportunity to work on tasks that require human intelligence, but also help alleviate time constraints. That means CFOs and finance departments can play that all-important role of evaluation and providing guidance to internal and external stakeholders, including other C-level executives – but now – it’s backed by data analytics.

Strategies driven by data

As economic and risk environments continue to shift, CFOs need to be able to connect business intelligence from multiple data sources to ensure that they can make data-driven strategies. Only then will they have a much greater understanding of exactly who they’re doing business with, and in turn, manage the customer/supplier portfolio much more effectively.

With the help of experts such as technology partners and CTOs, finance departments can identify the right systems and tools to improve the use of data, meaning CFOs can make accurate real-time strategic decisions, and fast.

The digital revolution and big data no longer sits with just technology departments. Now, it also sits firm on CFO’s shoulders, so they must invest in data strategies – and fast – in order to keep up with competitors that are doing similar. The traditional finance role no longer exists, and could cost a business their commercial advantage if operations and strategies do not adjust to these fast-paced conditions. Yes, the job role has changed, but when enhanced with the right technology, it couldn’t be a more fulfilling role.