A Finance Leader's Guide to Automating Analytics

Chapter 1. The Evolving Role of the CFO

In an increasingly digital and intelligent world, the CFO’s role has evolved. This chapter examines the changes and highlights implementation challenges that a CFO could face. Subsequent chapters will provide guidance on automating analytics solutions in finance.

Navigating the Next Digital Revolution

The modern CFO is facing four major paradoxes:

• How do they create long-term value when they are faced with demands to cut back priority investments to deliver more immediate results?

• How do they deliver their strategic goals when traditional finance skill sets limit their company’s ability to evolve?

• How do they capture value from bolder and more innovative agendas without burdening themselves and the company they serve with unnecessary risks?

• How do they derive strategic insights from data that is growing in volume and complexity?

These paradoxes have driven the role of the CFO to change dramatically in recent years. Market pressures, business competition, and larger numbers of stakeholders are forcing the CFO to respond quicker and with more granular insights on behalf of their company. At the same time, data science, AI, and innovative technologies have emerged to provide faster and more reliable ways to manage and analyze data.

The changing demands of stakeholders have created higher expectations. CFOs fully acknowledge the need to drive digital transformations and adapt to meet these demands. The potential to unlock value through ...