Finance Leaders’ Perspectives on Tech Trends

The fast advancement of technologies and vast availability of data are reshaping today’s economic world. In order to create and sustain a competitive edge in the market, organizations are propelled to tackle unique challenges in leveraging data and generate a new level of insights that were impossible before, defined by the “4Vs” – data velocity, data veracity, data volume and data variety. Through the implementation of advanced technologies such as cloud, APIs, automation, process mining and machine learning, organizations are truly enabled to democratize data utilization, connect systems, leverage the latest iterations of foundational ERPs and lead to an integrated data-driven business insights and decisions making.

However, some critical steps should be taken to make a successful transition in the organization’s technical landscape, and keep the momentum when implementing new technical solutions.

Firstly, focus should be on the bigger picture. In prioritizing amongst reams of business information and possibilities of technical solutions, Finance leaders are expected to devise a digitalization strategy that suits best for the business, and determine (1) which insights are needed, (2) what questions need to be answered and (3) which metrics should be used. This ensures that solutions are properly tailored to the business’ needs.

Secondly, all parties should be aligned and prepared. Key stakeholders (internal and external) should be onboarded, talents should be enabled with the right skillset, and everyone should be working towards the same goal. Leveraging success stories is a great way to exploit momentum and unleash further value from technologies, and involve people that do the work as part of the transition journey.

Finally, be prepared for trial-and-error. While there is no silver bullet, companies need to be audacious in piloting different approaches, assessing opportunities within and beyond Finance and collaborating with other functions, eventually moving towards an optimized technological landscape for the organization as a whole.

To accelerate in this race for technical solutions adoption and truly harness the power of technological solutions, it is of vital importance for the organization and its employees to embrace change: after all, the only constant in this full-fledged tech transformation is change itself.