Over the last year, CFOs and their teams have been forced to adapt and transform their business practices because of disruptions brought on by the pandemic. Leaders had to discard old habits and adopt new ones.
One area that is receiving increasing attention to help companies not only survive but also emerge stronger and more dynamic is financial digital transformation. Although some businesses are meeting this challenge and implementing change, the majority of the financial services industry still lags.
The real-world applications couldn’t be more profound and urgent for CFOs and executives to embrace and evolve. Financial transformation will allow businesses to engage a clearer vision, operate more efficiently and employ a more agile strategy. Through this transformation processes, systems and people will work more in sync company-wide. Executed properly, this can result in higher profit margins, fewer hours in the office for staff, and happier employees.
For starters, by applying predictive analytics, CFOs and their teams can base decisions on instant information and not just intuition. They can view data at a more granular, insightful level and be a steward of their own information in real time, instead of waiting for periodic reporting weeks or even a month after the data risks becoming stale and dated.
Deploying automation also produces more timely information and consequently more informative choices and outcomes. Stocking inventory, staffing and crunching the potential number of deals will help generate a nimbler team and more robust bottom line.
Some other benefits from financial transformation include the ability to:
- Access, analyze and share information that exists across multiple systems and files more quickly.
- Document the data process flow to explain the internal audit process.
- Collaborate with internal teams by removing “black box” programming and spreadsheets.
- Quickly rerun processes if changes are made or to enable continuous audit processes.
The Big Four accounting firms see the writing on the wall and are modifying their approach by creating giant data centers and investing in technology. Ernst & Young, for instance, just invested in a new Cloud Enablement Center to improve client support for financial services innovation, signaling its desire to align with the evolving technology sector.
Other firms like ours at Embark are investing in similar resources to assist the ever-expanding mid-market. Helping these companies who need data analytics, instant forecasting and performance information will allow them to operate more efficiently, reinvest savings into new jobs, and ultimately deliver more growth into surrounding business communities.
Many finance companies have unfortunately been too slow to adjust and utilize these tools for maximum benefit. Managing costs and reevaluating an organization with faster and more illuminating data can lead to better profit margins and higher wages. This provides the flexibility needed for employees to work on other issues, teaching them new ways to solve problems and create value. Without this efficiency, organizations will continue to experience burnout and grind.
Financial digital transformation is a technological evolution and can lead to a stronger overall business environment, and the extinction of the dormant day-to-day groundhog’s experience. But if organizations don’t transform themselves, they risk falling behind their peers.
