The most recent Gartner survey of CFOs and finance leaders suggests that the top three initiatives of 2020 will be:
- Finance analytics
- Finance organisation strategy and structure
- Finance technology optimisation
But I believe that technology can be solved with help from IT and external resources. Changing from within is the more difficult challenge and opportunity.
Rishi Mehra, chief financial officer, Asia at AON, says We live in an environment where the first-mover advantage is fleeting. He identifies the biggest challenge and opportunity for the CFO.
“If there is a challenge there’s an opportunity. If you solve (or invented) an opportunity, another challenge will arise from it because other people will replicate that opportunity quickly,” he commented.
He noted that the commercialized opportunity window is very small – perhaps a few months. Hence the urgency.
“The challenge then becomes how do you create this culture of innovation within your organisation to keep coming up with those innovations, and keep creating incremental value and with all changes? Creating a culture of change is a single most difficult challenge for a CFO,” he cautioned.
Click here for the full article: Driving a culture of transformational innovation
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