In a post-pandemic world, CFOs now need to drive digital innovation

There is no doubt COVID-19 was a deadly trigger for many businesses across the world. Here in Australia, 220,000 businesses said they would be left with no choice but to close once government financial support ended, according to ABS research. 

But just as SARS — the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak — paved the way for Alibaba to tap into consumer demand for e-commerce services to become the multibillion dollar juggernaut it is today, the pandemic has provided an on-ramp for brands, companies and organisations to transform their business models to address shifting consumer habits to set them up for success.

But of course, this is much easier said than done. For retailers, the move to digital cannot come fast enough. In its annual e-commerce report, Australia Post reported that in 2020 online sales accounted for 16.3% of total retail spend and Online Goods spending was up 57% since 2019. ACRS research shows 84% of Australians reported purchasing online in the last three months and 37% of these shoppers making weekly online purchases.

As more organisations are forced to embrace digital technologies to thrive — not just survive — they are turning to their chief financial officers (CFOs) as one of the key drivers of digital transformation. After all, CFOs are the ones responsible for financial planning, working with the CEO and the various business lines to drive strategy, calibrate expenses and oversee revenue and profits. 

With responsibility for key success factors for the business, CFOs have the best experience and understanding of how to optimise and operationalise new business models. 

At least in theory. 

The ‘missing link’ that CFOs need to modernise the business

While CFOs understand business models, the tools that CFOs rely on today are rigid, siloed and based on manual processes that limit access to real-time insights. What’s missing for most CFOs trying to invest in innovation today is the ability to quickly make sense of new data, to accurately compare forecasts with actuals in real-time for ongoing trends analysis. 

From a practical perspective, when supply chain, CRM and ERP data needs to be integrated to give finance the right answers to particular questions, the process needs to be invisible to CFOs and their teams. When hundreds of reports must be delivered annually to the board, shareholders, stock markets and others, the process of gathering the financial intelligence must be fast, error-free, and accurate. 

When looking at analytics dashboards, the information needs to be accessible to people beyond the data science team. And when actions need to be taken but have not been — like a Just In Time (JIT) supplier payment on 30-day net terms — the automated alerts need to be crystal clear and timely. 

All this simplicity at the front end demands a considerable level of sophistication at the back. This can be hard to find, and it is one reason why so many CFOs continue to default to the spreadsheet. With data rarely in one place, CFOs and their teams have historically had to rely on dropping disparate sources of information into spreadsheets. Many are still forced to do so today.

Organisations can pivot at velocity — just ask ANZ Bank and Al-Ikhsan Sports

To gain greater agility, organisations need to arm CFOs with the ability to see ahead — to access data across multiple systems (both on-premises and cloud sources) and turn raw data into trusted, actionable data that can guide and improve decision-making. More importantly, CFOs and their teams need to be able to not just access but understand these data sets.

One of the most important innovations in business intelligence is making analytics more proactive and less intimidating no matter one’s business function. A new generation of analytics should empower users at any skill level to explore and understand data, a concept we call “Active Intelligence” that enables CFOs to move at speed.  

ANZ Bank has adopted this thinking and uses data to transform the way finance operates. There are currently more than 6500 people in ANZ’s finance department using more than 40 reporting applications in a mix of QlikView and Qlik Sense. It has empowered the banking giant to provide reporting that is always consistent. and tailored where the business drivers are different. These advantages work throughout approval flows, user access management, archiving commentary, and key person dependency.

 Similarly, retail does not have to fall behind e-commerce. Al-Ikhsan Sports, the number one sports retailer in Malaysia, is an example of how it has leveraged business intelligence to thrive. Al-Ikhsan Sports needed a robust business intelligence platform to guide intelligent decision-making. To this end, the retailer partnered with Qlik in 2017 and began modernising the way it uses data. This solution gave Al-Ikhsan Sports access to timely information across locations, products, price points, and customers to minimise margin erosion while optimising operations to provide a great customer experience — both off and online. With the power of analytics, Al-Ikhsan Sports improved its decision-making and business strategy to capture market share and grow its network of stores by 20%.  

In short, in an era of unprecedented change, organisations that wish to move at speed need to give their CFOs Active Intelligence tools — to optimise every moment with informed decision. Business intelligence (BI) platforms that make people do the hard work encourage only niche groups of employees to access data and is an outmoded and irrelevant approach in today’s fast-paced world. 

To arm CFOs and systems with proactive BI that truly supports and delivers a continuous state of intelligence that trigger immediate actions — that’s the true path forward.