FINANCE
The Role of Finance Continues to Evolve
T
BY DANIEL OH
he roles of CFOs and controllers have been greatly transformed in recent years with the increased demand for accounting automation and the need to adapt to change. Today, their responsibilities could include corporate planning, strategy, and connecting the dots between financial and operational data to drive business growth. With the power of analytics and process automation, CFOs and controllers can create better collaboration, enable data-driven decision making and realtime access to financial data, and gain deeper visibility into transactions, cost, and revenue on demand. In fact, according to our recent The Redefined CFO Study, CFOs recognize that artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and automation will be crucial technologies for organizations to integrate into the finance function going forward. Among the vast range of capabilities that can be achieved through accounting automation, there are three main areas that are ripe for improvement in this field of technology — let’s take a closer look at those here.
foundationmag.ca
May/June 2022
ISTOCK/ Z_WEI
Collaboration is key Fostering better collaboration can be key to the role of more effective CFOs and controllers. With automation powering cloud-based accounting software, finance leaders can bring vital information from any device at any time right into the meeting room with them, while facilitating collaboration through digital communication channels with context-specific chat and dialog capabilities. By leveraging these cloud-based tools, they can also bring those same conversations into a dashboard or reporting screen and give greater context to the data and information being discussed. These capabilities can enable CFOs to do anything from viewing and reconciling journal entries to reviewing invoices, planning, and rolling out projects with their teams in real-time. This creates a foundation to build internal relationships which strengthen the level of trust in the organization through a single source of data truth and asynchronous communication, which is even more important with remote work dividing workforces and assets.
FOUNDATION Magazine
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