Finance is undergoing a major revolution in the corporate world. It must now be transformed and play a crucial role for the stability and growth of the company : becoming a superhero of profitability.
A great coach for business functions
The majority of the employees have a perfect command of the load/income equation.
However, few of them have a real understanding of the profitability factors of the company.
As a superhero of profitability, the financial department has a coaching role to play. It must engage in a proactive approach to leaders in order to train them in the real factors of profitability.
This training must not only take place at the executive level, but also at all levels of the company.
Through this approach, the challenge will also be to make business leaders aware of how these cost-effectiveness factors impact their missions and their BUs. With this in mind, the finance function must provide them with regularly updated and easily readable data in order to be able to track their level of performance against these factors.
For the success of the approach, the relationships between the finance team and business leaders can only be envisaged in a very good collaborative spirit.
Similarly, communication must be opened at all levels of the company to allow questions, information and comments to circulate in two directions.
The finance function must therefore be transformed in depth and change its cap from “controller” to that of “coach” of business teams in this constant search for profitability.
An offer of reading and analysing data that give super powers
Nowadays, companies have access to a large amount of data. It is up to the finance function and its team to make sense of it.
For this, its mission is first of all to collect, then analyze and finally to make this data readable and understandable in order to give it a real power: to highlight the most significant developments and to formulate action plans to respond to them.
This means identifying the KPIs to be monitored at all times and making them understandable to business managers. This is done through dashboards, reports and presentations, so they are an excellent communication tool between business teams and management and management teams.
To succeed in this mission, it is imperative that the finance team have expertise in information management and data analysis.
Particular attention must be paid to the accuracy and consistency of data in order to gain the trust of leaders.
A superhero at the forefront of new technologies
No company can ask the finance function to carry out its mission as a profitability superhero without using to new technologies.
The systems and processes used 10 or 15 years ago with Excel are no longer able to meet the needs and expectations of today’s financial world.
Based on this observation, a new mission of the finance function focuses on technological intelligence in order to find the new tools to effectively fulfill their missions and to provide the proof of the investments that need to be made.
« Cloud services, analytics tools, data integration system » must be part of their daily culture in order to be able to compare the solutions offered today on the market.
To make the best choice, the finance team must identify its priority needs and analyze the solutions identified in terms of ergonomics and integration capabilities to the company ecosystem.
Similarly, it is important that this choice be collaborative with the company’s other teams to ensure its adoption and future use.
In this sense, it is necessary to be assured that future users of the product have the necessary skills to be aware of the added value brought by the product and to use it to its full potential.
These are the conditions for the success of the financial department.
Conclusion
In our complex and volatile society, the issue of profitability is now a major challenge for companies.
The search for stable profitability frees up financial funds that are essential for investments.
These investments are no longer an option for the company that wants to secure a serene future thanks to a constant evolution of its offer with the objective of greater customer satisfaction & loyalty
By donning the superhero costume of profitability,the finance function evolves and becomes an incredible lever of performance and future for the company.