Financial Transformation – Completing the Digital Evolution Puzzle
Amidst the pandemic, the world of finance has been going through a digital transformation. The finance teams of organisations across the spectrum are improvising their digital game. The shift to digital which flourished during the pandemic has now resulted in several positive impacts on business operations. Faster and cost-effective performance, better customer and employee experience amongst others are many of its benefits.
In a recently concluded roundtable organised by BW Businessworld with some of India’s leading IT minds, a wide range of topics was discussed including the importance of digitalisation and automation, adoption of new systems, predictive analytics, data insights, cyber-security, talent acquisition, employee experience, and user experience. The session was moderated by Faisal Kawoosa, who has over 15 years of experience in the technology market.
Into the new era, where physical becomes digital:
Praveen Shrikhande, Chief Digital & Information Officer at Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail Limited, highlighted the importance of IT readiness and how it has led to the reduction of manual and physical touch-points.
He said, “One major change which took place was the readiness to go digital. Earlier, many of the processes involving finance were physical as they involved paper documents. It was difficult to shift them into digital. The pandemic has forced everyone to embrace digitalisation and automation including core finance processes.”
System-based audits are of paramount importance in this digital era. “When it comes to financial compliance, audits - the maturity of moving towards system-based audits has now become mainstream,” added Praveen.
Manuj Desai, Global CIO at Sterlite Technology Ltd., mentioned the importance of systems being in place to carry on business activities.
Manuj said, “The way we are looking at financial transformation, is that systems need to be built for the business; i.e. it is the CFOs of the world that will eventually make decisions based on the available information. To guarantee the information needed to make those decisions is available at a click of a button, we have established simple processes that are implemented alongside IT. The role of data is critical here.”
He highlighted the need to minimalise the number of interventions required to get a job done.
Manuj mentioned, “One of our enterprise architecture practices is the ‘three click approval’. We do not want a flow beyond a point where it takes more than three clicks to do a job and it doesn’t matter what business unit it is. We are now focussing on how to enable our businesses to make the decisions based on the information available to them.”
Manuj also highlighted the importance of going through different kinds of analytics solutions.
“We are trying to make sure that we can get to ‘prediction’ as far as information is concerned. To do so first comes the descriptive journey of ensuring that everything is available, followed by inquisitiveness- playing those scenarios so that the business is able to make those decisions and beyond that, we get into prediction and prescriptive journeys,” he added.
Mankiran Chowhan, MD, India at SAP Concur underlined how the role of CFOs has become more important in the post-pandemic world. She said, “The role of the CFO has been in a massive spotlight thanks to the pandemic, and the new age Finance leaders emerging now, have a strong ambition and influence to drive business along with digital changes for delivering growth.”
She added, “Strong finance leaders have emerged from the shadows of being just enablers of digital transformation to truly helping businesses transform. Finance leaders are now looking at a digital-first approach similar to customer-facing functions; teams are leveraging real-time data and analytics that will support the company growth.”
Chowhan highlighted that we need to be ready to face uncertainties in the future. She said, “The past year has come with a lot of uncertainties and we know that our predictions for the future may or may not hold but if we have learned one thing, it is that it’s imperative for us to prepare ourselves for all types of scenarios.”
Future of finance in a digital world:
Dhiraj Bhandary, Partner at Deloitte India focussed on how digital transformation is going to stay put in the long run and is not going to wither away post-pandemic.
Dhiraj recalled that India’s digital journey began when we adopted GST in the year 2017. He said, “The ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic in an accountant’s life are similar to those of what followed with the impact of 9/11.”
“In the weeks of March and April 2020, there was complete chaos. Everyone had to close their books, there was no choice,” he added.
Dhiraj underlined that once things began settling down, a lot of chatter about “digital and finance” began and anything about revenue forecasting was hogging the limelight.
“In the past year, I have done 16 sessions on digital in finance with CFO’s and their organisations to create awareness, this velocity was never seen before,” he added.
Dhiraj emphasized the need of attracting the right talent in finance organisations. He said, “Talent acquisition in the finance organisation of the future will be very different from what there was in the pre-covid era. The new generation is not the set of people who will be looking at a voucher and doing debit/credit, they are the people who have everything available on apps on their handheld devices.”
He highlighted his point by stating that if a finance organisation has to attract the right talent, they will need to sell themselves as a digital organisation.
Arun Attri, CIO at Wonder Cement, remarked that the pandemic has taken down all the barriers for the digital approach of a business. He said, “Before the pandemic, we were working on a three-year digital transformation roadmap, and suddenly the pandemic hit. The initiatives we took as part of DX, like moving 100% load to Cloud, paperless processes, etc., had helped us to ensure the productivity of people while working from home during the pandemic.”
Arun pointed out that before the pandemic came, no one seemed ready to go digital. He said, “In pre-pandemic time, the change management was a challenge while rolling out few initiatives as part of Digital Transformation roadmap, but due to the pandemic, the team has realised the real benefits of those digital interventions, and the adoption rate has gone up like anything.”
CFOs now looking for real-time information:
Charu Verma, Director of IT Applications at Interglobe Aviation highlighted how the financial departments of organisations are going through digital transformation and adopting new technologies.
Charu mentioned, “In the traditional way of operating in finance, the reports were made by the MIS department who would further share these reports in excel sheets to the higher management. Now there is a dramatic change in the handling of such reports.”
Charu highlighted how CFOs would like to keep the data handy and use it whenever it is required. She said, “In the current date, the management is looking forward to self-service or a CFO cockpit where all the required data can be monitored real-time and there is no dependency on anyone else to get data /reports.”
“CFOs do not want to wait till the end of the month to look at the financial numbers, they want to keep a daily tab on it – be it cash flow, revenue or expenses, and they want to take corrective actions before the month ends, by using predictive analytics and actionable insights,” she added.
She underlined the importance of automation and digitisation across the organisation.
Charu commented, “CFO’s can’t bring in cost optimisation just through digitization of Finance department. They have a bigger role wherein they need to drive cost optimization as an agenda across all departments of the organisation. For this automation and digitization needs to be driven for an end to end processes across the organisation.”
Mankiran Chowhan remarked that we should focus more on intelligent technologies now. She said, “The theme to pair human inventiveness and empathy with cognitive technologies will help build intelligent use cases to work smarter.”
Chowhan also pointed out that one of the foundational challenges of the CFOs is to employ a digitally dexterous workforce to reap the benefits of digital technology.
The horizon of the finance world is expanding:
Vikas Vijaywargiya, CIO at Zensar Technologies Limited focussed on how the role of CFOs has undergone a profound shift. Earlier there were only a few tasks for a CFO which included finance reporting, managing the books and records, and statutory compliance but now the situation is different.
Vikas said, “The CFOs are actively engaging in a business transformation which involves investment in new-age technologies with focus on enterprise risk and cyber security. The goal for Digital Finance is to enable the data processing to monitor operational efficiency (run the business), business transformation, and Cyber Security and Enterprise Risk.”
He pointed out that the lack of awareness at the digital front has to be done away with. He underlined, “Lack of awareness on the digital front has to be done away with, and legacy has to be modernised. It is about having the right data at the right time to execute the best business decisions in as close to real-time as possible which can only be achieved through modernised platforms.”
The focus of CFOs is to support growth in an ever-changing environment:
Rasesh Shah, CIO at Fractal Analytics India highlighted that apart from focussing on cost optimisation and revenue growth, the focus of CFOs is also to support growth in an ever-evolving environment.
Rasesh said, “The scenario is consistently changing, the business models are changing, the government regulations are changing. The change is the only constant as they say.”
He highlighted the fact that CIOs play an important role to help CFOs connect the dots across different systems. He said, “If we look from a broad lens, there are four major processes where CFOs are currently focussing on – hire to retire process, enquiry to order process, order to cash process, and procure to pay process.”
All these processes consist of several sub-processes and it is difficult to keep track of each of these processes for a CFO. He mentioned, “This is where the CIO comes in and helps CFOs connect the dots.”
Rasesh added that the challenge is “how to provide a superior experience and help eliminate the day-to-day friction across systems for our stakeholders.”
Employees are expecting change:
Mankiran Chowhan pointed out the fact that the pandemic has led the workforce/employees to expect certain changes as we are living in a globally connected economy, and how companies are working towards making life easier for the employees.
Retaining a loyal and happy workforce will save the business money, and increase productivity.
Chowhan said, “In a globally connected economy, a major focus of all the departments including Finance, IT and HR is on how to make life easier for the employees. This, in turn, will have a positive impact.”
She also mentioned that pandemic has impacted our spending patterns and the priority of companies is now on digital acceleration. She mentioned, “In the past 18 months our spending pattern has changed drastically, more and more digital payments are being done.
Chowhan also mentioned a report published by Gartner which stated that 69 per cent of the Board of Directors accelerated their digital business initiatives in the wake of COVID-19.
The roundtable concluded with every panelist acknowledging the importance of technology in the domain of finance. They highlighted the need for readiness to understand and embrace technology to make the most out of it.
