3 Steps CFOs Can Take to Accelerate Digital Transformation

[Aklima@416]

CFOs are increasingly aligning their role with the acceleration of digital transformation. In this leadership role, the focus is on future planning due to significant changes across a wide variety of industries amid economic uncertainty. Using sophisticated digital technology is essential to stay agile, make smarter choices, and develop a workforce that can handle the next wave of challenges.

Change is happening. Many organizations are focused on accelerating post-pandemic processes, such as data access, collection, and analysis, ensuring they have the resources they need for years to come.

Digital transformation is not a one-time event, it is an ongoing process. Thus, changes in organizational and IT environments require a constantly evolving business and technology strategy.

The CFO’s role almost always begins in the office, starting with creating a roadmap to improve the company’s initiatives and results. An effective financial strategy requires more than a deep understanding of basic financial principles and an up-to-date knowledge of various management approaches. Rather, they are intended to help CFOs understand the implications of certain options and weigh their choices based on the accumulated data.

Understanding what’s happening with the organization, its customers, employees, and competitors is critical if CFOs are to accelerate digital transformation. Through digital transformation, CFOs can either facilitate market disruption to become innovators or wait until it’s too late and they’re disrupted by a competitor.

1. Apply AI/ML for predictive forecasting
Machine learning, natural language processing, optimization, predictive and prescriptive analytics are all ways to use advanced analytics to uncover patterns opportunity seeker mailing lists hidden in big, unstructured data. CFOs can expand these capabilities to create models that can predict hundreds of different scenarios and choose the best course of action from all the options.

What happens next? Organizations can use predictive forecasting to make smart choices that drive better customer experiences, higher growth, and greater efficiency, all while cultivating an innovative corporate culture within their company. Similarly, CFOs can use advanced analytics to help them make better business decisions by changing the way they apply it.

Typically, CFOs often use historical data and ratios in financial research to better predict the financial health of their company. In today’s economic environment, early warning signs of change are critical, and organizations must be proactive in recognizing and understanding them to better position their businesses to adapt.

The most sophisticated analytics can leverage internal and external data to gather and deliver insights about customers, competitors, suppliers, partners, and employees, enabling companies to manage their performance at the sub-micro level. Rather than using a single model to predict all possibilities, hundreds or thousands of variables can be used, with the best models selected to drive preferred outcomes.