The Financial Department is at the heart of a massive digital revolution that is already transforming life and business. BearingPoint, CDO Alliance and FI+ teamed up and interviewed leaders in the world of finance who were involved in this type of issue to take stock of the current situation, identify real use cases, trends, the best start-ups, and the key factors of successful digital transformation programs.
We are at the heart of a massive digital revolution that is already transforming life and businesses, the 4th industrial revolution. The 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos made it the theme of their conference.
The speed at which this revolution is occurring is phenomenal: It only took Google 8 years to reach a billion euros in turnover, and the “unicorns”, new technology companies that have reached a billion euros in market capitalization in just under ten years, have multiplied to come close to 200 (167 exactly) in 2017.
Within large companies, the Finance Department is at the heart of this wave and no area is spared by the tremendous transformation underway: according to a study conducted by Oxford in 2014, accountants will be the first digital refugees. Big data offers a new field of action in predictive analysis and is about to revolutionize performance management methods. Process robotization is already a reality among SSCs, and young millenials working in finance will come to expect new methods and far less linear career paths.
Fundamentally, this boom in new technologies (cloud, AI, blockchain, RPA, big data, etc.) offers CFOs an unparalleled opportunity to reinvent the financial function by becoming the true “architect of value creation,” the perfect co-pilot of a company that has become more agile.
Elisabeth Denner, Partner in BearingPoint France
Finally, it offers them the possibility of extending their influence well beyond the financial function by setting the tone for a much broader transformation in the company, embracing new, much more innovative and collaborative working methods.
It is to make a concrete situation, identify the real use cases, the trends, the best startups, and the key factors of successful digital transformation programs that BearingPoint, CDO Alliance and FI + have associated and interviewed. leaders of the world of Finance engaged with this type of problem.