Accelerating the Digital Enterprise: The Big Challenges for Digital Finance

The Digital Transformation entails changes in all departments of a company. However, Digital Finance has perhaps been the area where the change has been one of the fastest and most significant.

The Finance Department and the CFOs today take on new challenges far from classical accounting. The speed at which Digital Finance adapts to the company is essential to gain competitive advantage, promote successful strategies and consolidate success in the organization.

Index:

• The Role of the Finance Function in the Digital Enterprise 
• The 3 Big Challenges for Digital Finance
• How Digital Finance can become a strategic business partner 
• Yeeply provides the tools for Digital Finance 

 

The Role of the Finance Function in the Digital Enterprise 

Most finance teams have assumed that their role is changing. CFOs recognize that increasing their financial planning and analysis (FP&A) capacity allows them to act as an agent of transformation within the company. 

And it is that today the financial function plays a strategic role in the digital transformation, which ranges from the efforts for the road-map, to the investment priorities throughout the company. Digital Finance often also directs the implementation of ERP business resources, HR , EPM (Enterprise Performance Management), or the supply chain.

The COVID-19 crisis has underscored the need for speed, both to keep up with competitors and to enable many smaller companies to rapidly evolve their operations, products and services.

This adaptation has required the Finance Unit to approach the rest of the commercial functions. Now, Digital Finance impacts business decision-making in a more efficient way: through significant strategic information on expenses, ROI, forecasting in the value chain and, of course, the EPM software that allows the CFO to take on a more active role. 

In addition to maintaining the accounting or auditing processes, the CFO serves as a link between the different departments of the company to facilitate decision-making based on quality information. Consequently this strategic and quality information contributes to responding to emerging threats, or support in the adoption of digital tools and processes throughout the organization.  

The 3 Big Challenges for Digital Finance

Challenge No. 1: Convert data into information

The combination of Digital Transformation with the figure of the CFO accelerates the ability to handle large and complex amounts of data, turning it into useful information for decision making of all types.

In this sense, most organizations are only scratching the surface of the enormous potential that their data offers them. However, for finance teams that bring their information together for analysis, there is a need to integrate different systems like CRM, ERP, HR, etc. through IT. Analyzing the data obtained and enriching it in a consistent way allows us to offer results with real value for the company. 

Key considerations for intelligent data analysis include: 

• How to map and integrate internal data silos
• How to combine local data sources in the cloud
• Which external data sources add value
• How to ensure high data quality and a consistent structure
• How to manage access to sensitive data for different stakeholders

 

Related article | How should you digitise your company after Covid-19

 

Challenge No. 2: Advancing skills and analysis tools

Digital Finance must adapt to the company to take advantage of the opportunities that arise based on its different data sources. 

However, we must not forget that simple data collection will never be enough. Advanced data science and analytics skills are needed to interpret and extract actionable insights, and EPM tools are key.

The company must have analytics resources on a daily basis so that the CFO’s office can lead company-wide analytics initiatives. The tools that enable these innovative FP&A features incorporate technologies such as AI and Machine Learning, which provide the finance department with new capabilities.

 

Keep reading | The best digital and tech experts for your business

 

Challenge nº 3: Empower the business with AI

Digital transformation initiatives benefit when AI and Machine Learning techniques are applied, since they allow the processing and analysis of large volumes of data.

To gain value from concrete data patterns and make predictions through these techniques, the CFO needs to work across multiple lines of business. 

By understanding the particular requirements of the business, you will ensure that business functions can act on the new knowledge generated. This means that the CFO needs a deep understanding of the business and IT systems to adapt, refine and integrate the results of AI into key business applications.

How Digital Finance can become a strategic business partner 

SMEs are one of the most active agents in promoting innovative business activities. In this context, financial services provide the necessary support for your business activity, while technology drives the transformation and improvement of business models. 

Incorporating Digital Finance to the company or entrepreneurship is a very useful strategy for making better decisions, gaining competitiveness and efficiency in the business fabric.

The first step to benefit from Digital Finance is to establish a unified approach to planning, reporting and analysis across the organization. Achieving it helps to standardize and optimize processes, improving efficiency and data quality. 

The CFO becomes an “Information Specialist” turning data into actionable insights by combining accurate business analysis and business performance management.

This integration of data into strategic, operational  and financial planning will lead to actionable plans, forecasts and more accurate performance monitoring.

 

You may be interested | What is GPT-3 and why is it revolutionising AI?

 

Digital Finance can help companies 

Digital Finance relies on Big Data technology to extract and analyze a large amount of non-standardized data, establish a new set of control systems and integrate different sources of information into risk models.

Therefore, Digital Finance can help investors make business and financing decisions, making it easier for companies to obtain credit support through, for example, network loans, which stimulate innovation in entrepreneurship and help small businesses overcome the hurdle of financial constraints. 

Digital Finance is also capable of driving greater automation of repetitive processes. They use a wide range of technologies such as AI or RPA, leading to an acceleration of new insights and predictive forecasting by leveraging intelligent algorithms and powerful prescriptive recommendation engines. 

These processes allow a dynamic response throughout the business, favoring the achievement of better commercial results.

Yeeply provides the tools for Digital Finance 

At Yeeply we are committed to being the perfect digital partner for all types of businesses, especially those with a Finance Department.

We offer digital services and tools to overcome the most important challenges that every company faces. 

We achieve this thanks to tools such as the Jedox solution, which provides the performance and analytical power any business needs, and through key technologies such as RPA, EPM or AI, that allow us to drive new business models and create more value for our customers. 

If you want to know everything we can do for your company, contact us and meet our experts in Digital Finance tools.