Disruptive change doesn’t have to overwhelm finance teams – make it work for you and use it to help the company gain a competitive advantage.
Disruption has become business-as-usual in many markets. As a result, business leaders must act decisively and quickly to compete effectively. This creates an additional challenge for CFOs and finance teams, as they need to find solutions that enable their organisation to respond flexibly to disruptive change and innovate at will, without losing control of budgets and finances.
Finance teams face a delicate balancing act. Freeing up funds for innovation has never been more important. However, CFOs can’t offer business development teams free rein to spend all the company’s resources on innovation. This puts pressure on finance teams to navigate complex issues around managing disruptive change.
We have identified three ways finance teams can navigate disruptive change:
Rethink how you run your business
Finance teams should use solutions that are scalable and agile, as well as adaptable to the organisation’s specific and growing needs. A unified, real-time financial system, based in the cloud, is the ideal tool to enable growth. Decision makers should ensure the chosen solution delivers all of the functionality required, such as flexible and secure remote access, full integration with other systems, and accurate data for reporting, budgeting, planning, forecasting and decision-making.
Uncover new business insights from real-time data visibility
Finance teams rely on data. Gaining access to real-time, comprehensive data immediately puts the finance team in a stronger decision-making position. This lets the team identify new information, trends and patterns, so it can respond more readily to changing market conditions. As a result, supporting specific innovation becomes easier, since it’s possible to present a more compelling business case.
Use data as currency of collaboration
Too many organisations rely on various technology systems without creating a single, consolidated view of their data. Yet the finance team can’t make sound decisions if it’s unaware of sales numbers or manufacturing forecasts, for example. It’s essential for organisations to remove data silos and create a single source of truth.
Disruptive change doesn’t have to overwhelm finance teams – they can make it work for them and use it to help the company gain a competitive advantage. To do so successfully, look to the cloud to identify and implement solutions that will let you leverage disruption rather than be blindsided by it.
Don McLean, Managing Director, Fronde
