CFOs: Time to get app-ready

It is almost a foregone conclusion that 10 years from now, Finance will be running on an ecosystem of Mobile apps. As mobility solutions continue to change the human behavior patterns such as in the way we order food, hail taxis or request a plumber, enterprises will adopt mobility to run their businesses. The convenience of an apps led architecture and the dominance of the millennials in the workforce will hasten this makeover. The CFO’s should plan for this future and work closely with their CIOs and IT partners for the right solutions that are enterprise ready, cyber secure and fully integrated at the back end.

Perhaps easier said than done. The rules of corporate life still demand three way matches for paying invoices, multiple quotes for procurements and adherence to a strict regime of reporting financials to the street. Our norms of controllership make it essential for complex technology solutions to sprout up to support transactions processing and endless reporting requirements. In this context, it sounds almost iconoclastic to move forward to a future that is app ready.

Here is an opportunity of the lifetime for the CFO to move beyond his/her well-known avatar of Steward and Operator to that of a Catalyst and a Strategist. We at Deloitte believe that the Indian CFOs should hear this clarion call and rewire their finance technology strategy to meet the asks of the not so distant future. The need of the hour is to dream digital, think digital and act digital - and start putting together the building blocks of a future of finance that will become increasingly “apparent!”