Finance staff skills need to evolve to support finance function automation. On the way out are the days of the spreadsheet-crunching, business-calculator-carrying finance employee. Instead, future finance professionals will need a skillset that both understands and embraces financial automation. Irrespective of the industry, CFOs/FDs are increasingly aware that they and their staff must evolve to exploit technology. To achieve this, they must recruit multi-dimensional and tech-savvy finance professionals. Technology beyond spreadsheets and calculators has become a part of the finance function.
What drives this?
Arguably four factors are driving this evolution of the finance skillset. They are the need to:
- reduce involvement in the manual and/or repetitive
- deepen analyses
- offer strategic problem-solving in parallel with risk awareness
- communicate and thereby influence.
Reduce involvement in the manual and/or repetitive
Traditional finance functions have too often operated as silos within the broader business. Yet all finance functions involve and are critical to the execution of each business’ objectives.
Unfortunately, such reliance on manual processing consumes an inordinate amount of time (manual processes can take up 84% of an AP professional’s day) source IOFM. In a similar vein, simple errors and delays with payments can produce:
- reputational risk
- disenchanted suppliers
- poor job satisfaction (evidenced by that repetitive, mind-numbing manual work)
- excessive employee churn.
Automation, using technologies like , are one part of a digital, tech-aware business. Better still are proven solutions from software vendors who have not only pulled technologies together but have also refined processes which minimise the manual. Technologies and solutions which reconcile basic debits and credits enable finance professionals to refocus. The new finance professional skillset needs to know how to make the most of such technologies and solutions.
Deepen analyses
Businesses gather data. The finance professional’s skillset must be able to derive insights from this data, to turn that data into useable information. As observed above, there is little interest in the repetitive. Instead, analytics are assuming an ever-greater importance.
Historically, a financial analyst’s activities involved creating and populating endless spreadsheets (with major opportunities to introduce unintentional data or formula errors). The analysts would use these spreadsheets for data entry (especially to other systems/silos), to produce financial reports and effect reconciliations and consolidations during periodic close processes. That is no longer acceptable.
In the future financial analysts will have access to insights, trends and projections from historical data to inform plans and actions. Thus finance professionals must possess the analytical and technological skills to investigate the transactional and then apply this to where the business seeks to go. Indeed, the language of finance is moving beyond that of accounting and its focus on individual transactions to one of analysing what matters to a business.
Offer strategic problem-solving in parallel risk awareness
As finance moves from a cost centre approach to a value-centric approach () through automation, financial skills can drive improved internal control rather than offer the traditional role of accounting (as the monies gatekeeper/cash manager). This requires strategic problem-solving skills.
A Gartner study suggested that “robotic process automation will eliminate 20% of non-value-added tasks within the office of finance”. If true, finance employees who can move beyond being ‘bean counters’ and exploit and innovate with technologies like RPA will add more value to their employer’s business.
Yet RPA is not the only skillset finance professionals will need. They will also require a thorough awareness of issues like:
- anti-money laundering
- complex fraud
- compliance and regulation
- export constraints.
- security
While understanding liquidity risk or mastering Sarbanes Oxley for financial reporting remains necessary, comprehension of how financial risks can expose a business matter is also important. The finance professional skillset must also include the ability to relate to IT and its processes as well as traditional accounting to anticipate and then avoid not only defrauding of the business but also avoid criminal actions and then liability.
Communicate and thereby influence
One consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the increasing automation of electronic communication and support between finance functions and others within a business (think Zoom, Teams, etc.). This is unlikely to reverse. Instead, finance professionals are moving beyond serving as intermediaries – primarily between their internal customers – to an increased participation with external third parties (customers, suppliers, banks, payment operators, etc.).
Perhaps the classic instance of this is the secure Self-Service Portal. This is where customers and suppliers and even other authorised third parties can find information, for example the status of a payment. When delivered well, the effects are positive for both internally and externally – and for finance professionals. In the latter case they can focus their finance skills on adding value to their businesses. This is a marked change from ‘merely’ facilitating the flow of transactions and the summarising of transaction data.
In conclusion
The skills demanded by businesses of financial professionals are changing. As described above, there are at least four drivers of the transformation of the finance professional – all involve technologies to some greater or lesser degree. Success means:
- moving beyond traditional transaction processing (by automating this to the greatest practical degree)
- focusing on turning that transaction data into business relevant information.
The point is that finance skill sets need to evolve beyond a cost centre mentality to assume increasing importance and influence. In so doing this will:
- support the business’ objectives, immediate as well as long term
- combine the operational, reputational and strategic
- release and exploit the financial professional’s expertise (albeit in the past under-used).
To learn more about what automation exists for the finance function and how it can benefit your organisation, Tipalti has sponsored an Enterprise Times white paper, which is downloadable here.
Tipalti comes from the Hebrew expression for “We handled it.” Tipalti is the only company handling both Accounts Payable and Global Partner Payments workflows for high-velocity companies across the entire financial operations cycle: onboarding and managing global suppliers, instituting procurement controls, streamlining invoice processing and approvals, executing payments around the world and reconciling payables data across a multi-subsidiary finance organisation.
Tipalti enables high-growth companies to scale quickly by making payables strategic with operational, compliance, and financial controls. Companies can efficiently and securely pay thousands of partners and vendors in 196 countries within minutes. Thousands of companies, such as Amazon Twitch, National Geographic, Business Insider, Hopin, Cazoo and Time Out use Tipalti to reduce operational workload by 80 percent and accelerate the financial close by 25 percent, while strengthening financial controls and spend visibility.
