ABSTRACT
Finance departments have often led the digitisation of organisations with the automation of accounting systems. But there are many more opportunities for the CFO to grasp opportunities that can be strategically significant.
One opportunity is to collect and use the increasingly large amount of data that organisations have available. Much of this data can be used to build better, more complete, financial models that will help organisations deliver more effectively. With more data, more up-to-date data and the ability to analyse data on the fly, CFOs can detect significant new trends and support making better decisions. System automation is another opportunity which not only reduces costs but also increases the accuracy of data and makes it easier to compare different data sets. However, making the most of these opportunities requires planning as well as common sense, together with a degree of scepticism about the accuracy of computer-generated models.120
