Transform finance for the intelligent enterprise
March 27, 2019
March 27, 2019
With disruption in almost every industry, finance leaders recognize that they need to move the finance function out of the back office and into a proactive, forward-looking, predictive function powered by intelligent insights.
This shift is taking place where business leaders realize that the finance function needs to operate as strategic value-creation partners with the business. Accenture’s ongoing research into the transforming role of CFOs shows that, already, 81 percent of CFOs are focused on identifying areas of new business value as one of their key responsibilities. And 77 percent believe it is in their remit to drive business-wide transformation.
As CFOs face the effects of globalization, digital and the rapid pace of change, a new paradigm is taking hold to develop competitive business advantage through finance capabilities. We know there’s a 70 percent correlation between digitizing finance and overall finance effectiveness and crucially, how digitization happens makes a big difference. Our review of five finance processes—record to report, accounts payable, order to cash, tax, and financial planning and analysis (FP&A)—shows that organizations digitizing the most in FP&A achieve the most effectiveness gains. Their financial effectiveness is 50 percent higher than peers that only digitize accounting and finance operations.
But how do businesses transform their organizations to realize these efficiency gains? The journey to the new digital finance organization begins with an intelligent platform.
Finance’s evolution from backward-looking reporting to strategic business partner and value architect is well underway. We’re seeing more and more verticalized capabilities that are designed to enable intelligent finance operations. But to realize their enormous potential for innovation, finance organizations need to take advantage of an integrated platform-based landscape, with vertical functionalities and a data-centric approach.
A digital core integrated with smart machines and robotics can help finance functions eradicate manual transactions and deploy machine learning to manage complex accounting processes. Smart financial reporting supports self-service analytics on real-time data that is available anywhere and at any time, on any device. Proactive planning and forecasting harnesses AI to anticipate the value of business decisions and predict and simulate financial outcomes. And accelerated closing enables daily period-end processes, a real time view of P&L and hence the ability to dramatically accelerate and improve decision-making.
Finance has a unique opportunity to unleash the power of digital to drive very significant business outcomes.
How should finance leaders move forward and accelerate their journey to the intelligent enterprise?
Accelerate your journey to the intelligent enterprise with Accenture myConcerto for digital finance.
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