One of the key duties of the chief financial officer

(CFO) is to understand and represent the company’s

financial position. The CFO who can report on the

financial position with great accuracy, detail, and

insight is empowered, both immediately and for

the future. For today, that CFO gains a competitive

advantage for the company. For tomorrow, the CFO

can create plans that are actionable and constant,

yet flexible.

HINDSIGHT, INSIGHT, FORESIGHTToday, an accurate financial position provides a competitive advantage; tomorrow it enables planning that is actionable, constant, and fluid.

A recent survey of 157 senior

finance executives, conducted

by CFO Research in collabora-

tion with Longview, found that

the path to accurate, detailed,

insightful reporting is paved with

new technology, and the finance

chiefs who were surveyed often

find their technology lacking.

When asked about the state of

their finance function’s technol-

ogy, most of the survey respon-

dents—a combined 63%—chose

technological states described

as “inefficient,” “silo-con-

strained,” or “not linked to deci-

sion-making.” Only 14% reported

that their finance functions are

at an “optimized” technological

state. (See Figure 1.)

Wanted: More Tools

CFOs who are not supported

by the level of financial report-

ing technology they need can

be hamstrung, along with their

companies, for future planning

and initiatives. According to

the CFO Research survey, only

12% of the respondents said

they “strongly agree” that their

current technology is flexible

and agile enough to support

future business-strategy and

business-model changes over

the next two years. And only

11% strongly agreed that their

finance function uses technology

to support new business-innova-

tion initiatives.

For current issues, this lack of

support can cause bad decisions

or more reactive decisions, as

the CFO struggles to see the

root cause of an issue. For future

issues, this lack of support pre-

vents the ability to re-forecast,

course-correct, and make strate-

gic decisions on customers and

product lines. In both instances,

the CFO’s core role in supporting

growth and innovation is effec-

tively stymied. The finance ex-

ecutives in the survey explained

that “CFOs can concentrate on

the business aspect more than

the compliance factor” and

“technology will allow better use

of data to make decisions.”

2 I HINDSIGHT, INSIGHT, FORESIGHT

FIGURE 1 Which of the following choices best describes where your finance function is on its technology “transformational journey”?

Don’t know

47%

12%

6%12%

11%

29%

20%

14%

23%

3%Optimized (enabling data-driven

decisions and supporting high performance)

Unified (using cross-functional processes and

common KPIs)

Integrated (connected across the enterprise, but not linked to decision-making)

Aware (process-proficient but silo-constrained)

Reactive (inefficient and using basic tools such as Excel spreadsheets)

One area that poses a challenge

to CFOs and financial reporting

is big data—both the large, com-

plex data sets and the advanced

analytics that extract meaning

from them. With the advent of

big-data collection, storage and

retrieval, many companies are

overwhelmed by the possibility

of accessing data and analytics

on their customers, their markets

and, increasingly, their business

processes. In fact, many compa-

nies find themselves data-rich

but information-poor. Accumu-

lating and storing vast amounts

of data is the easy part; finding

actionable insights is extremely

difficult without analytics solu-

tions that executives can use

quickly and easily.

And companies that find them-

selves armed with powerful new

management technologies, such

as enterprise resource planning

systems, still can lack the other

tools or data-retrieval tech-

nologies they need to take full

advantage of the new technol-

ogies. In many cases, the chal-

lenge is that relevant information

resides in disparate systems,

and the task of bringing all this

information together in real-time

is challenging.

More than three-quarters (76%)

of the finance executives sur-

veyed by CFO Research believe

that implementing a strategy

to leverage big data is funda-

mentally challenging, and 62%

believe the value realized from

big data strategies exceeds the

cost of that challenge. These two

findings show that CFOs know

that important trends and pat-

terns exist in the disparate data

that surrounds them – which

can lead to better and faster

decisions – but getting that data

organized and analyzed from a

process standpoint appears at

first look to be a daunting task.

The surveyed finance execu-

tives also spoke out about these

trends in discussing how finance

should better support innovation

in their companies. “We need to

have a more detailed and accu-

rate data warehouse. Our ERP

system is strong but we need

to have better access to data,”

wrote one executive. Another

executive indicated that his com-

pany needs a better big-data

warehouse so his finance depart-

ment can pull out specific met-

rics and trends in the data. And

another executive wrote that

CFOs also must “adapt to and

meet evolving reporting needs.

As more information is available,

better reporting is needed.”

FIGURE 2 Technology and the CFO (percentage of respondents who agree that…)

47%

12%

6%12%

49% Advances in technology

will fundamentally change the role of the CFO over

the next two years

3 I HINDSIGHT, INSIGHT, FORESIGHT

A More Strategic Role

As CFOs adopt more advanced

tools for financial reporting,

some of the surveyed execu-

tives expressed the belief that

the role of the CFO will become

more strategic, and involve more

planning rather than reporting.

“Technology is the key, and it

can act as a major boost, espe-

cially to the finance function of

the organization,” wrote one ex-

ecutive in the survey. Technology

“will free up so much of finance’s

time, which they now generally

spend in collating the data for its

presentation.”

Another of the executives in the

survey wrote that technology

helps make “dependable and

authentic information available

to the CFO,” which leads to fact-

based decision-making, business

support, and strategic planning.

“Efficiency and agility with

which the CFOs need to operate

in today’s world will be support-

ed,” the executive said, “and

technology will also get rid of

non-value-added and repetitive

finance support functions.” That

in turn will allow the finance or-

ganization to become more stra-

tegic by gaining a better under-

standing of what the company’s

results actually mean, enabling

an increased focus on the drivers

of business performance.

Also, wrote another executive,

finance can “use data and an-

alytics to deliver greater value

while maintaining or reducing its

budget overhead.” About half, or

49%, of the survey respondents

said they believe that advances

in technology will fundamentally

change the role of the CFO. (See

Figure 2.)

Conclusion

New and advanced financial re-

porting tools influence not only

the effectiveness of the CFO,

but also the current and future

performance of the company.

Without the tools that technol-

ogy can provide for finance, the

CFO’s abilities are constricted,

especially for strategic deci-

sion-making and planning. Com-

panies that provide technology

to their CFOs will benefit from

both the immediate bottom-line

improvements in their finance

departments’ efficiency, as well

as from the long-term advantag-

es from the evolving CFO’s role,

including fact-based, detailed

analysis and planning.

“TECHNOLOGY WILL FREE UP SO MUCH OF FINANCE’S TIME, WHICH THEY NOW GENERALLY SPEND IN COLLATING THE DATA FOR ITS PRESENTATION.”

4 I HINDSIGHT, INSIGHT, FORESIGHT

5 I HINDSIGHT, INSIGHT, FORESIGHT

Longview makes performance

software for the Now business

realities. Hundreds of thousands

of business leaders from Global

2000 companies, operating in

more than two hundred coun-

tries, leverage Longview daily to

make strategic and immediate

business decisions based on

Now business realities.

Their performance management

software drives the advantage

of planning with critical insights

into vast and disparate data

points. Longview brings budget-

ing, forecasting, tax reporting,

analytics and the financial close

to its single platform for out of

the box performance manage-

ment.

With the recent merger of

Longview and Tidemark the art

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domain knowledge with Tide-

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