Marching Towards an Autonomous Finance Function – 101

Gone are the days when CFOs exclusively served as the head of the finance department. CFOs, today, are expected to be the strategic catalyst that drives business growth and resilience. The current economic turmoil amplifies this need, and the CFOs of tomorrow are embracing the concept of autonomous finance and relying on artificial intelligence for making up to 80% of business decisions. An autonomous finance function is the key for CFOs to unburden their team’s time from recordkeeping responsibilities and to drive better business decisions with greater precision and less risk.

Unfortunately, a silver bullet for building an autonomous finance function does not exist. As CFOs brace for the global economic downturn, it is imperative for CFOs to take steps to successfully bridge the gap towards a more autonomous finance function. Even when access to capital is challenging, investing in talent, data, and automation capabilities needs to be a part of every CFO’s agenda, both for immediate benefits and to build the future of finance.

Step 1: Invest in finance talent for the future

Finance talent has been a barrier to unlocking value from technology investments, including successfully increasing the use of automation. Traditional finance functions have relied on employees engaging in manual-intensive activities ranging from recordkeeping to correcting errors to analyzing historical results.  Forward-looking finance functions need employees to focus on breaking down cross-functional silos and analyzing broader data sets to facilitate predictive decision-making. CFOs can help their workforce successfully make this shift by taking the following actions:

a) Improve the finance department’s technological literacy

CFOs should improve their own technological literacy by participating in focus groups, attending finance technology conferences, and reading more about technology advancements. They should also set aside some dollars to provide employees with technology training on both existing tools utilized by the department and emerging tools in the industry. A greater command of technology capabilities will organically empower finance talent to reimagine how best to augment their work with digital capabilities.

b) Augment your existing finance team with experts

Strong process experts and data scientists help your team take a fresh perspective on how to simplify existing processes and collate broader data sets automatically to reduce cycle times and provide outcomes with minimum error. As CFOs look to lift recent hiring freezes, take the opportunity to repurpose some of these dollars to invest in finance data analytics. Infusing the finance department with this type of diverse thinking will organically facilitate the change management required to successfully adopt technology that helps evolve the function.

c) Upskill the finance department’s communication skills

Stronger communication skills provide finance teams the confidence to break out of their silos and build bridges with other departments to simplify end-to-end business processes. Also, empower the team with access to reliable operational data necessary for enhancing their analytical capabilities. Bringing together reliable broader data sets unlocks a finance department’s predictive decision-making capabilities while minimizing risk. A strong partnership with non-finance communities can empower your team to build consensus, simplify the ways of working and solve shared problems together as one team.

Read part-2 of this series to know the other critical elements needed to build an autonomous finance function.