The Office of the CFO is at a tipping point. Economic volatility, increased competition and evolving regulatory compliance are forcing business to expect more from Finance leaders.
Today, most Finance teams still work with legacy systems, across disparate data sources, just to report on the past, leaving little to no time to move the business forward. The Office of the CFO is playing a more strategic role in steering the business, but many remain bogged down with these processes, unable to become the driver of organizational change that the C-suite and boards are demanding. The new generation of Finance leaders have started their careers at the beginning of digitization and will continue to drive modernization as they enter key roles, enabling Finance to play an increasingly strategic role across the organization.
It's time for the Office of the CFO to evolve or risk being left behind.
We are operating in a world where uncertainty and evolving market conditions are the new normal. Companies are looking to Finance to drive operational agility, manage new risk paradigms and unlock growth and innovation. CFOs must meet the moment to rapidly transform to meet new expectations and demands from the business.
The Evolution of Finance: New Horizons and Expectations
A shifting economic landscape, changing financial and regulatory requirements are just a few events that have forced Finance teams to re-think the way they operate and respond to risk. As a result, many Finance leaders realized just how vulnerable and dated their systems and processes were. While some CFOs navigated these challenges successfully, others did not. The pivotal question remains: what separated those who succeeded from those who failed?
The CFOs who were successful leveraged these crises as opportunities to adopt digital processes and drive long-term strategic initiatives. They were proactive, using the situation to enhance their processes, work environments and team's skills, rather than merely reacting to challenges.
This “transformation-oriented” approach continues to be integral for the current market conditions of persistent inflation, rising interest rates, and geopolitical instability. Today, many organizations are looking at how AI and ML can help them become more agile and informed to tackle specific business challenges
The Growth Mindset: A Balancing Act
The shift of the CFO role signifies a blurring of traditional boundaries within the C-suite.
Historically, the CEO set the overall direction, while the CFO managed financial reporting and compliance. Yet as these roles evolve, CFOs are increasingly transitioning to CEO positions, driven by their growth-first mindset that equips them to steer companywide success. A recent EY survey shows that 45% of CFOs is have a long-term goal of becoming a CEO, as the CFO experience is key to “providing the strategic grounding…required to prepare for the rigors of the CEO role.”
Today’s Finance leaders have navigated unprecedented uncertainty – the dotcom bubble, 9/11, financial and housing market crises, pandemics and geopolitical uncertainty. This has shaped their leadership approach in a way that considers risk versus reward, balancing short-term needs with long-term strategy. This enables enterprises to adapt quickly to market changes, leveraging purpose-built AI to drive agility and streamline operations to achieve immediate financial goals while laying the groundwork for sustained growth.
The Finance function understands it is uniquely positioned to meet these challenges, and this is evidenced by the fact that nearly 80% of CFOs recently surveyed by Gartner highlighted “leading transformation” as a top priority for 2024.
The Opportunity for the Future: Future Proof Finance
Finance teams continue to tackle increasingly complex mountains of data as they take on a strategic advisory role. To future-proof Finance, purpose-built AI emerges as a game-changer to drive efficiency, accuracy and transparency across the organization.
Digital transformation is now a requirement. But the Office of the CFO has faced several obstacles in driving widespread adoption of solutions like AI. A recent survey from Gartner reveals 61% of Finance executives are not using AI yet. First generation AI lacked widespread adoption in Finance due to:
- Difficulty integrating into existing workflows, requiring a data scientist with little knowledge of the business.
- Lack of context and transparency that Finance teams needed to accurately report on the business.
- The AI solutions leveraged data that wasn’t trusted, in an environment that wasn’t secure.
AI solutions that are built for Finance, using enterprise-grade security, pulling from a company’s own trusted, verified data with proper controls will enable Finance teams to effectively adopt AI. Applied AI integrates into existing workflows and automates processes, creating transparent data-backed insights while freeing up time for strategic analysis and advisory. These tools provide the agility and adaptability for Finance teams to transition from number-crunchers to strategic advisors.
Leveraging purpose-built AI will enable Finance teams to view real-time business drivers and advise the C-suite on critical decisions that protect the company and unlock growth. This is the driving value behind OneStream. We enable CFOs to stop wrangling data and Take Finance Further with a platform that unifies financial and operational data and embeds Applied AI for better decisions and productivity within a controlled environment.
As the role of the CFO continues to evolve - which given the learnings of the last four-plus years, is likely to continue at a rapid pace - they must embrace a growth mindset and modernize their operations. OneStream can help.
For more information about OneStream’s Intelligent Finance Platform, visit OneStream.com.
