CFOs and finance teams really want to get involved in tech innovation
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A study from Microsoft has highlighted the new pressures facing CFOs and their teams as they struggle to balance strategic innovation with their company’s long-term financial goals and financial health.
The report examines the effects of the pandemic that changed the role of CFOs, who moved from tax planning to driving innovation amid global economic uncertainty, to the point that 79% of finance leaders believe they should play an important role in business innovation to meet future needs.
The key to success is the successful use of technology, which Microsoft has investigated in a complementary study blog post (opens in new tab).
The position of CFO is being expanded
More than eight in ten (82%) finance leaders recognize the importance of artificial intelligence and other automation technology in supporting their organization’s goals, which can help reduce human workload and free up time to focus on things that matter require specific skills and concentration.
For example, data can be a vast environment that needs to be reduced to representative information in order to spot trends, predict future performance, and refine other areas of business. Despite this, Microsoft estimates that 8%% of finance leaders feel overwhelmed by their organization’s data.
In addition to exploring AI tools to support data management, Microsoft is eager to launch its new Dynamics 365 Finance business performance analysis (opens in new tab) feature designed to centralize data from more than one business workflow in an easy-to-use interface.
Looking to the future, Microsoft wants to take even more work off the hands of finance teams and try to replace them with low-code solutions that have saved the company’s 977 hours of manual labor and $25 million annually.
Of course, you don’t have to limit yourself to Microsoft’s offerings, and there are plenty of other options, including the best small business accounting software.