Mastering consumer expectations is the newest battleground on which businesses will succeed or fail, and no organization is better equipped to play a leadership role in that effort than finance and accounting (F&A), a survey of over 500 CFOs by professional services firm Genpact found. 

But the gap between where the F&A organization is today and where it needs to be to lead success remains wide. "Some finance functions have made progress on this journey, but there is a long way to go," the report says. 

The businesses — what the report refers to as "instinctive enterprises" — that will thrive in the years ahead will be "those that can connect, predict, and adapt at speed."

The finance function's unique power

It’s the F&A organization that’s best positioned to help meet consumer expectations because it connects all of the operational pieces together: it controls access to the data and generates the insights and it connects internal and external relationships.

"Finance and accounting functions play a vital part in guiding their businesses through the disruption," the report says. "But first they must unshackle themselves from transactional activities and take on more strategic roles, perspectives, and technologies."​

Respondents also said they believed the challenge of AI bias has yet be resolved; only 30% of finance professionals expressed confidence in F&A’s ability to combat bias, and none are very confident. (Bias in AI stems from the data used. Since AI learns from data over time, problems in data can build in bias in outcomes.) 

A main takeaway is that finance functions must reorient their leadership and future leaders to prioritize forward-looking strategy, data science expertise, and user experience, while also keeping a handle on the numbers.  

The study says the CFO's organization is "uniquely positioned to enable innovation across the business." But it follows that statement with asking whether the organization is rising to the challenge. Finance, it says, is a "transformation engine that remains unignited."

Steps towards evolution

While finance often takes "the greatest strides with automation, analytics, and AI technologies," the whole team must also "extend digital transformation throughout the rest of the organization," a large undertaking. The study acknowledges that with training, new hires, and new ways of working, the typical finance professional profile is beginning to look very different. As a result, leading CFOs are working towards building more connected ecosystems, adaptive workforces and instinctive insight.

"People often think the word instinct is analogous with gut, but that’s not what we mean," Katie Stein, chief strategy officer and global business leader of Genpact’s Enterprise Services, told CFO Dive Thursday. "We mean the speed and agility for decision-making, going from rearview reporting to prescriptive reporting. It’s moving at the speed of what makes a gut decision, but making sure it’s informed with intelligence."

Survey participants state that making the case for business analytics is the greatest obstacle, but only finance leaders can resolve this. The onus is on them to make a clear business case for investing in analytics capabilities that articulate the strategic value to the organization, the study says.

"Finance has a great vantage point to see what’s happening across the enterprise because it’s involved in many of the most important business processes," Stein said in the report. "Businesses are now turning to their CFOs [to] drive innovation and transformation across the organization."

One figure in the study shows the skill in finance and accounting departments' top demand is knowledge of advanced digital technologies. This, along with second place skill, data science, comes before traditional F&A skills in the F&A department, which is in third. But Stein doesn’t view this as a major disruption to traditional finance.

Embracing the non-traditional

Stein points out that nine out of 10 finance leaders agree they need to bring in nontraditional skills such as digital and data finance. "But there’s no real silver bullet to this," she said. "We need [people] in finance that can use that data that comes with the data skillset. It’s not to substitute finance skills, there’s just a lot of latency that no longer needs to exist, and when more transactional aspects of work are replaced, there’s a capacity to reorient to what’s needed." 

One of the top imperatives for CFOs specifically is to improve customer experiences and generate insights for the whole organization. In order to generate these insights, Genpact asserts, CFOs must "seize the role of data guardian." The bad news, the study found, is finance is largely not taking advantage of its unique ability to connect the enterprise. 

Moving into non-finance roles

There are two specific non-finance areas in which Stein sees the CFO have a natural role.  The first, as she calls it, is as the custodian of enterprise data. Fifty percent of CFOs agree with this; 10% "very strongly" agree. 

"Data is critical to driving enterprise performance, and making sure you have the right frameworks in place for using that intelligence," Stein said.

The second area is in enterprise management, connecting the business inside and out. When it comes to ensuring that resources are allocated to the highest-priority opportunities, Stein calls the CFO a "critical champion," because they are the "unbiased arbitrator of how financial resources should be applied."

The bottom line

Throughout the massive study, Stein has identified her bottom line, or, her "aha" moment. "80% of companies want to improve experience for the customer, the employee, the supplier, and so on," she said. "Experience is the number one corporate priority, because organizations are figuring out how to grow."

Per the study, 73% of finance leaders say they’re "somewhat" enhancing their user experience, but only 1% say they’re "significantly" meeting user expectations.

Her aha moment: finance has a core role in user experience, because finance supports the business by reducing latency and rework and using the information at its fingertips, when it’s needed, to make the right decisions and adjust. 

"That’s where the new tech allows us to learn from the good and bad decisions, and not be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the decisions," Stein said. "The number one principle is growth."