28 Feb
The days are over when CFOs were purely financial strategists responsible for predictable business. Their role has changed rapidly in recent years. Today, they are there when a corporate strategy is developed and they are much closer to the day-to-day business. So they are much more relevant to the business than they used to be, because market activity is faster and more volatile. Long-term planning is still important, but it is necessary to react quickly to changes.
Another important point is social and environmental factors: CFOs need to know how a company’s sales figures were arrived at. What does it take? Exactly, data. And we are already on the subject. With a cloud ERP, you have real-time visibility into the relevant data at all times and it is transparent across the entire supply chain. A cloud ERP provides the information very precisely, enabling important future simulations. These future analyses in turn support management in making decisions.
As with all topics, the human factor also plays a major role: How is a change process supposed to work if the people (in this case, the CFOs) who have the most to do with it are not involved in the process? CFOs today have to deal more with IT issues and understand them as well as they can, because at the end of the day they are working with the newly implemented systems and they are responsible for the numbers. Automation also comes into play here: where CFOs often had to gather data to create reports in the past, they can now focus more on business development because reports are done automatically and analytics are predictive.
As can be seen from the preceding sections, the role of CFOs is changing significantly today. And you can also see that if you want to keep up with the changes, you have to take the step into digital transformation. To show you a little better, how a cloud ERP makes CFOs’ lives easier and more efficient, we have compiled the eight most important points:
- Single Source of Truth: All data, information and figures are on one platform.
- Optimization of daily processes: Standardization with “SAP Best Practice” processes.
- Increased efficiency through automation: Thanks to technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and SAP intelligent Robot Process Automation.
- Modern business management and planning: uncertainty reduction and risk management.
- Easy scaling: Fast start-ups, quick capture of new employees and departments, and short time-to-market.
- Development of new business models: New billing models such as “anything-as-a-service” are becoming possible.
- Up to date: CFOs can focus on their core business thanks to automatic updates.
- Sustainable solution: Data on social and environmental factors are reliable and accurate.
