Digital Finance Organisation: Are You Ready?
AUTHOR: WOON-HUI OH
SENIOR ASSOCIATE CONSULTANT
Woon-Hui is a Senior Project Management professional with 17+ years of global experience. She specialises in Business Transformation and Improvement, with particular expertise in Performance Management, Customer Experience and Data/Information Management.
woon-hui.oh@loughridgetransformations.com
Building on our earlier post, Digital Transformation: Where to Start, let’s look at the critical success criteria for digital transformation in Finance. It primarily comes down to Organisational Readiness. But, more specifically, it is about people. Technology advancement is disrupting the ways of working in the Finance organisation. As a result, we now see increased intelligent automation, real-time insight, self-service, and the integration of a diverse workforce – even including machine-based roles. What, then, is the future ideal Finance professional’s profile?
The Right Digital Finance Skills Will Give the Organisation Competitive Advantage
Three core skills will be fundamental to the Digital Finance organisation in the future. Identifying, developing, and nurturing these traits will mean a competitive advantage.
Data
Firstly, it is about data – having the appropriate data intuition, communication, and transformation capabilities. The real value of Finance professionals will shine through via their ability to:
- Interpret and use data analytics and insights to support organisational strategy and decisions – data intuition;
- Communicate the insights or challenges clearly to both technical and non-technical teams and leverage the data in risk management – data communication;
- Mine and integrate fragmented data sets across organisational units to form a complete picture – data transformation.
Business Partnering
Secondly, solid business-partnering skills are critical. A capable business partner can build effective and impactful relationships. A Finance professional who builds these relationships with a healthy dose of customer service orientation, strong collaboration skills and flexibility will influence and deliver where it matters.
Driving business improvement and innovation through commercial understanding, expertise in strategy, value and performance management and corporate governance provide the foundations for the quality of those relationships.
Technology
Third, a proper appreciation and understanding of digital technologies. As digital innovation evolves, the Finance professional will tap into these technologies to derive more value for the Finance organisation.
To do this, they should be able to grasp the intricacies and how these technologies work – to collaborate with the technical teams (data scientist, developer) on exploiting the technologies to enable:
- higher performance
- increased productivity
- more integrated risk management
At a minimum, this means having a knack for technology and communicating effectively about technology. In addition to the weight of digital skills increasing in Finance roles, new roles with corresponding expertise are now emerging. These roles emphasise systems, tools, (intelligent) automation and data expertise, data analytics, assisted insights, and modelling.
Digital Behaviours are Critical for the World-Class Digital Finance Organisation
Finance organisations in the future will need to be robust and agile. Additionally, the ability to collaborate globally in a virtual workplace, with an increasing focus on data, business partnering and technology, will be a differentiator. For organisations and teams to succeed, there are, therefore, three critical pillars:
Effective Communication
Build a robust culture that supports collaboration
Building Trust
Shared Mission
Collaborative Spirit
Strategic Team Building
Maintaining or Improving Productivity
Establish accountability
Set expectations for each role and have organisational role models
Implement checks & balances to prevent never-ending workdays leading to exhaustion and resentment
Where to start with a Digital Finance Organisation?
Start with the end in mind. That means understanding how the new Digital Finance organisation should look. Then, define ways to develop the capabilities and detail an Organisational Readiness roadmap complemented by the right balance of processes and tools.
How can Loughridge Transformations support your Digital Finance Transformation?
As a process-led, people-led Finance Transformation practice, people are always at the core of our design solutions. Loughridge Transformations focus on organisational structure, capability and culture while ensuring process design reflects the latest digital developments. We provide successful and sustainable delivery through the Loughridge Transformations’ Nine Steps to Finance Transformation.
Loughridge Transformations can offer – with no further obligations – short virtual workshops that your organisation can use as the first building block in Finance organisational readiness for digital transformation.
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