The role of the CFO is changing: It’s moving away from compliance and optimization, towards a more strategic; customer facing disruptive role. How is technology empowering Finance teams?

The role of the CFO is changing: It’s moving away from compliance and optimization, towards a more strategic; customer facing disruptive role. How are FP&A teams delivering strategic value in today’s world?

A plan, for an incompetent manager, is just an administrative task that needs to be completed to satisfy the boss and headquarters. Nothing else. There is no attempt to think about objectives, goals, roadmaps or any of the classic planning principles. For a boss this behaviour should be easy to detect, but if they are unaware of their inherent incompetence, then the incompetent managers will remain undetected.

Watch the recording of the FP&A Trends Webinar to learn about the latest trends and developments in FP&A based on the global survey results.

There are many terms connected with FP&A, such as “unstructured analysis,” “predictive analytics,” and “machine learning". Often very little detail on how they can be used in everyday life. Sure, there is an odd example such as how the sales of one product in a supermarket are related to another based on their location. But what do these technologies actually do, and how can they help management in today’s fast-moving, complex business environment?

Many companies measure their progress against annual objectives through profit and loss (P&L) reporting and a business performance measurement (BPM) tool. In many cases, this tool is a scorecard summarising the key P&L and balance sheet numbers. Is this enough?