The CFO, Your Business Strategy Partner

When planning a strategy for the future of your business, the CFO is not always the first person you think of, yet CFO’s are trained to align the business and business strategy to the goals outlined by CEO’s and directors.

There is a stereotype of CFO’s as bean counters, yet these days the role of CFO goes far beyond the balance sheet. CFO’s are trained experts in a myriad of global regulations, IT systems, future technologies and ideas, as well as keeping their finger on the pulse of industry disruption, changing business models and your competitors.

Technology Enabling CFO’s To Deliver More To The Business

How does a modern CFO keep up with widespread industry changes while continuing to deliver on core business/role responsibilities? Machine learning and AI technology embedded within modern ERP systems, like NetSuite, is facilitating widespread automation of complex or time consuming tasks, which in turn is freeing staff to deliver ever more back to the business – dramatically improving productivity and ultimately profitability.

Business is no longer discussing robots on the shop floor, the leaders of your industry are now implementing, on a massive scale, robots in the back office; they’re processing invoices, generating reports and managing intercompany invoicing.

On top of that, the integration of the Internet of Things, or Industrial Internet of Things, with the business’s ERP and financial management systems, is further enabling the automation of the shop floor, kicking off entire workflows that are triggered when a particular inventory item is low, or when an item is ordered.

AI, Blockchain, Machine Learning: The Future of Finance Is In The CFO’s Hands

The future of finance is packed with new regulations, technologies and business models. CFO responsibilities are increasingly stretched beyond the finance function. Keeping up with change while delivering on core accountabilities makes it tough to focus on delivering as a strategic business partner while still doing all this other stuff.

This whitepaper discusses the ways in which Machine Learning and AI can support CFO’s in their role as “strategic business partner”, how they can take advantage of technology to continuously deliver on their core accountabilities to their business, while also investigating the impacts of future regulations, changing business models, and preparing their business for the big industry wide changes they know are coming.