The New Role of a CFO!

Besides their traditional critical roles inside any organization of managing the financial books of a company, including tracking cash flow and financial planning as well as analyzing the company's financial strengths and weaknesses and proposing corrective actions for short term and long-term sustainability. The new extended role of a CFO is to be the catalyst of digital strategies inside their organizations.

The CFO must wear a new suit that puts him at the center of the digital change and adaptation.

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated big time the winds of change for all the C-suite levels and more specifically for the CFOs; businesses lived the impact of technology on their performance as they rapidly transitioned to remote work modes, support new customer interactions via digital Omni-Channels modes, and manage supply chain disruptions. Digital transformation rapidly became part of any CFO’s vocabulary and agendas.

CFOs nowadays must partner with CIOs & CDOs to guide investments in their companies’ digital transformation agendas to maximize returns and mitigate risk.

They must design with the CEOs the end-to-end digital transformation journey of their companies, which will allow them to become more agile and efficient internally as well as more competitive externally.

CFOs must understand data not only the numbers, taxes, and general ledgers, but also the holistic company’s data lake, in order to give their advice to the CEO and the board on how best to benefit from the data to capitalize on it and ultimately monetize it and tranform it into a profit center. We all know that "Data is the New Oil".

Here comes the role of the digital technology players such as Dell Technologies to support the CFO’s in their new role, leveraging on advanced data analytics and Artificial Intelligence Solutions not only to process financial data but to unlock predictive forecasting.

The CFO’s with the support of their Chief Data Officers and Data Scientists can rely on machine learning on data sets to capture real-time data analysis; apply advanced analytics algorithms that draw on AI and predictive modeling. Take advantage of our APEX and Multi-Cloud Offerings for affordability, efficiency, and growth.

This is only by becoming user friendly with the new digital technologies that can provide insights and foresight for him, that a CFO can drive wisely and smartly the future courses of his organization.

In Summary,a successful CFO in 2021 must:

1-    Acquire the latest digital technologies trends.

2-    Partner with CIOs&CDOs.

3-    Become a Digital Strategy Advisor to the CEO.

4-    Drive and Fund digital transformation initiatives inside their organizations with quick ROI.

5-    Leverage Data Analytics and AI to support his company's short-term and long-term financial decisions and strategies.

My 5 cents advice to any CFO is to become the champion of new digital technologies inside their organizations and to become the new friend of the Innovative Technology Players.

Thank You.

Charles.