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Why CFOs can’t afford to play it safe any longer

Announcement posted by Mogrify 03 Dec 2018

From crisis point to future-proof: Australian blue-chip brands transforming their finance function

Brisbane, December 03, 2018 – There may be no position under more pressure in organisations right now than the CFO. The importance of data is rising, competition is increasingly fierce, and workplaces are modernising by the second. CFOs who don’t realise this and take advantage of progression in technology will fall behind.

Guy Jones, IBMs’ Worldwide Technical Sales Leader, Data Science & Business puts it clearly: “The finance function needs to be a true partner to the business, to step away from just number crunching.”

Mo Treadway, Global Head of Financial Management Advisory, KPMG, concurs in this KPMG article, saying CFOs cannot just play it safe, they must be one step ahead in enterprise thinking.

The majority of CFOs have seen the writing on the wall, with an estimated 72% of organisations intending to modernise their finance function through the centralisation of analytics by 2020, according to Gartner research.

How will CFOs know when they’re at the tipping point? How will they know when finance function modernisation has to be an urgent priority, rather than simply an item somewhere on their to do list?

Australian Analytics Consultancy, Bistech, have released their latest state of play report into financial modernisation which outlines the tipping point a range of Australian blue-chip brands found themselves at, before realising they’d fall far behind the competition if they didn’t act.

·        For Allianz Worldwide Partners, essential tasks and processes were taking too long. The organisation was managing their financials in flat files requiring manual updates with every change. It simply became untenable.

·        For ALS Global, rapid growth and complexity of structure was the catalyst for change. The growth brought constant restructures and their existing finance system couldn’t keep up. Every change became problematic.

·        Errors and inaccuracies brought Auto & General to its tipping point. Their challenge was that every number was different. Each business unit had different reports and different views of things. The MD couldn’t trust the numbers or get a single version of the truth. He needed this to change so he could make strategic decisions about the company’s future.

Bistech is a Brisbane-based analytics consultancy specialising in performance management solutions. Their state-of-play report into financial modernisation in Australian blue-chip organisations is an insightful whitepaper dissecting this complex issue and outlining how CFOs can modernise.

They analyse how fast the industry is changing and how those changes have deep-reaching implications for organisations’ finance functions. It touches on the role of predictive analytics – ground-breaking technology in AI/Machine Learning. Ultimately, though, it notes that organisations must have the correct foundations in place first.

With a modernised finance function, CFOs and their organisations will be way ahead of their competition.

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Notes to Editor

Bistech are a Brisbane-based consultancy specialising in the deployment of business analytics and performance management solutions.

They specialise in:

·        Business intelligence

·        Enterprise planning

·        Predictive analytics

·        Information management

·        Financial performance management

·        Location intelligence

Working with organisations across Australia, New Zealand and wider APAC region, their pragmatic delivery approach, specialist domain expertise and focus on improving business outcomes allows their customers to achieve a fast return on their business analytics investment.