The role of the CFO in finance management is evolving, said Desmond Botha, Fios production manager, at the SAS Forum 2008.
Botha said SAS's new financial solution seeks to drive business profitability. “There are a lot of challenges that financial departments are facing today. Delivering the right technology has become a crucial point in business.”
According to Botha, performance management is transforming the traditional role of the CFO to one of a trusted advisor, for all areas of business within an organisation.
“In order for finance to take its rightful place as an advisor, the first step is for manual processes to be automated and made more efficient, freeing the division from time-consuming and tedious tasks. The second step is to provide the ability, through enabling technology, to model, analyse and assimilate information to optimise decision-making.”
In 2007, Business Week interviewed more than 300 c-level executives. It found that half the companies interviewed were under-utilising their technology. Botha emphasised that data management is one of the biggest challenges companies face.
“How do we identify and capitalise on opportunities for today's growth while managing risk? How do we raise costs without hurting productivity? How do we improve production planning? How do we align day-to-day operations with long-term strategic goals? These are some of the questions the CFO asks on a daily basis and there is one answer to all of these challenges: that's by taking a holistic approach. It's not only the role that technology will play, but also how communication and strategy is making data available to plan the way forward,” Botha said.
“Businesses find it difficult to drive accountability without streamlined processes,” he noted. “SAS Financial Integration solution ensures financial dependency and streamlines consolidation and reporting processes, improves accuracy of budgets and assists in predicting and responding to market changes.”
The primary goal of the solution is to minimise time spent on creating financial reports, Botha said. The solution comes with built-in Excel templates and allows all users to monitor and customise reports and data flow. Alerts are sent out when a document has been commented on or altered. In this way, Botha maintained, the solution drives accountability and ownership of data within a company.
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