Almost every week there is a press release or report from one of the Big 4 accounting firms urging businesses to improve efficiency through financial process automation, standardisation and innovation. So as we approach a new audit season the troubling question is why are audit fees so stubbornly high and increasing? And at a time … Continued
The importance of the CFO as a business partner is well established, but as organizations in all industry sectors begin to confront the inevitability and rewards of digital business, the involvement of the CFO in marketing is becoming more pronounced. A recent EY survey[1] found that 54% of CFOs say that their collaboration with Chief … Continued
The role of technology in job destruction and creation has been a source of heated debate since the industrial revolution. Whether it is farm machinery, telecommunications or transport, rapid changes in technology have transformed economic development – on the one hand displacing outmoded ways of working and yet on the other spawning entirely new industries … Continued
WHAT SHOULD DIGITAL CFOs DO? The digital economy is pervasive. There isn’t a single industry sector or business that isn’t affected, directly or indirectly, by the impact of digital technologies such as the cloud, mobile, big data and social. But with such profound changes underfoot CFOs can no longer brush digital change and innovation under … Continued
Innovation on the ‘inside’ The notion that innovation has to be glamorous and ground-breaking is seriously misplaced – recent research shows that looking after core financial processes on the ‘inside’ of the organisation adds far more to the bottom line over the medium term than the latest customer-facing gimmicks. A 2014 study by McKinsey highlights … Continued
The Billon Dollar Startup Club is a collaboration between The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones VentureSource which tracks venture-backed private companies valued at $1 billion or more. The club follows some of the most rapidly growing and valuable businesses on the planet. You will see some very familiar names on there but the ‘engine of growth’ underpinning all of … Continued
Most CFOs have ‘bought-into’ the cloud in some shape or form. If they are not moving to the cloud now then it is definitely on the near-term horizon. IDC the analyst firm says that public IT cloud services spending will grow to more than $127 billion in 2018, representing a compound annual growth rate of … Continued
A central tenet of the Modern Finance agenda is the crucial importance of process automation and standardisation. And it’s not surprising because if you look at any medium to large business you will find multiple instances of different vendors’ budgeting, consolidation, ERP and CRM systems. And you don’t have to take my word for it. … Continued
The choice is no longer cloud versus on-premise Up until now the nature of the cloud market for financial solutions (Corporate Performance Management and ERP) has been pretty straightforward. It’s been a straight choice between traditional on-premise vendors on the one hand and a growing clutch of relatively new cloud vendors on other. And although … Continued
1.Support experimentation Innovation forces us to re-assess traditional measures of ROI. Business models in the digital era do not always conform to historic expectations of internal rate of return, payback or discounted cash flow. If we simply relied on ROI many important initiatives wouldn’t get off the ground. That’s not to suggest that a business … Continued