By Tom Jones, Aston Carter Strategic Client Development Executive
Finance Leaders Must Stay Ahead of Advancing Technologies
Finance leaders must continually evolve to effectively serve as strategic partners to executive decision-makers. Doing so is essential to ensuring the digital transformation necessary for driving business growth and managing risk is on track. This is increasingly important as new technologies bring rapid change to finance and accounting operations.
With the pace of transformation accelerating, finance leaders need to identify department priorities and continue to embrace new and emerging technologies, processes and talent needs to help their organizations maintain their competitive advantage, enhance their financial management systems and protect their organizations from cybersecurity risk.
Fortunately, most have already made the commitment. Already, 87% of senior business leaders say finance transformation is a company priority. Ninety-two percent of finance leaders have already started their journey to introduce finance transformation into their finance functions. And 40% of organizations have brought digital finance initiatives to scale.
In staffing their teams and preparing their organizations for their critical transformation initiatives, finance leaders should keep in mind three trends:
- The need to update legacy ERP systems while migrating to the cloud
- The benefits of incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into finance operations
- The importance of building robust protocols for cybersecurity in finance
Updating Legacy ERP Systems
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are so mission-critical they’re often referred to as the organization’s “central nervous system.”
Finance leaders are best served when all financial applications — the organization’s financial ecosystem — are seamlessly integrated into a sound and robust ERP system. This streamlines their work, makes it more efficient and ensures the right data and information is continuously flowing into the organization’s financial systems.
Operating with outdated legacy systems can cause teams to spin their wheels unnecessarily. Instead of working proactively to optimize and create efficiencies to meet market demands, outdated systems can lead to slower performance or downtime, employee dissatisfaction, and reduced efficiency and security.
A top concern for CFOs and finance leaders will be to find and adopt an updated ERP system that aligns with their organization’s finance needs. Ninety-four percent of CFOs consider ERP systems important elements of their digital transformation strategy, and 95% of businesses say ERP implementation and adoption led to business process improvement.
Incorporating AI in Finance Operations
As AI makes significant strides in the workplace, many finance leaders are identifying opportunities to employ the technology to find efficiencies in processes, support strategic financial planning and decision-making, accelerate business growth and build resilient finance functions. Fifty-three percent of finance leaders say they have several AI experiments in flight. Nearly 24% of finance leaders have already implemented AI and are using AI capabilities for their workplace’s finance functions.
The goal of implementing AI in finance operations isn’t to replace workers, but to free up time by offering support for tedious, time-consuming, low-value tasks. This allows workers to focus on high-value tasks like strategic decision-making, financial forecasting and in-dept analysis. Advancing toward this goal could have a significant impact on operations: A study on the impact of generative AI on highly skilled workers found that when used within the boundary of its capabilities, AI can improve a worker’s performance by as much as 40%, as compared to workers who don’t use it.
Strengthening Cybersecurity in Finance and Risk Management
With the increased focus on finance transformation, cybersecurity and risk management are crucial for businesses of all sizes. A recent survey found that 69% of respondents expected financial crime to increase over the next year, with almost a third pointing to cybersecurity and data breaches as a threat.
CFOs and finance leaders will be charged with identifying and mitigating financial risks and protecting their organizations from cybersecurity threats.
Implementing robust cybersecurity measures includes:
- Data protection – protecting sensitive information from malicious or accidental damage
- Regular security audits – proactively and regularly evaluating your systems to identify and address vulnerabilities
- Employee training and awareness – equipping employees with the tools and knowledge to protect data, reduce risks and combat cyber threats
Access Senior Finance Talent for Strategic Growth
In preparing their teams and organizations for this ongoing transformation, finance leaders who partner with a strategic talent solutions partner, like Aston Carter, can ensure their transformation initiatives stay on-time and on-budget. Aston Carter can add capacity and fill talent gaps with the existing workforce and project team by providing functional, subject matter and program management expertise.
Aston Carter represents a cost-effective alternative to the larger consulting firms with access to the same, or better, talent. For more than two decades, we’ve been helping our clients unlock trapped value within their organization by leveraging a people, process and technology approach to solving complex business problems and accelerating the transformation journey.
Contact us today to learn how we can help you build capacity and fill talent gaps to ensure your next finance transformation initiative stays on track.
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