Being a chief financial officer in today’s world of technology is already a role which is proven to be an ever-increasing challenge. Faced with the stresses of managing finances and making crucial financial decisions, CFOs are often confronted with an abundance of stress throughout their day-to-day life.
Though with this new age of technology thoroughly upon us, the CFO’s role is only becoming more and more stressful and they have to adapt and grow every day to stay on the top of their game.
As well as a lot of trends giving CFOs increased stress, some of them are also granting them further abilities and distances, allowing them to reach out across the financial world and explore in greater depth.
Added stress does come with technology changes and advancements, though not all are necessarily bad for the CFO. It can be good, in forcing the current CFO to develop a wider range of skills and competencies.
Some Things That Are Having An Impact
One of the most notable things that are impacting today’s CFOs are platforms which offer regular updates as often as twice or thrice yearly. Platforms which fall under the category of Cloud provide regular updates as mentioned previously, with leading technologies under the Cloud bracket offering as many as four updates a year.
This has an effect on CFOs because instead of having to freshen up their knowledge and become familiar with updates every four or five years as with previous technological platforms, they are now required to get familiar with updated versions far more regularly, resulting in more work and more stress with constant learning curves.
One thing in today’s technological world that can aid a CFO is the broadness of the mobility that they have at their fingertips. It’s this ability to have access to their data or near enough any other data whenever they wish to view it and analyse it.
It grants CFOs with a greater and more in-depth look at their respective market or niche, allowing them to make more accurate financial decisions for their business’s growth. It would aid with investment priorities as they would be provided with a broader range of typically more accurate data on which to base their decisions.
Another positive aspect of having access to mounds and mounds of data would be that CFOs would be able to pay close attention to external information. External Information like trends and tactics in other countries and other businesses – and attempt to apply those strategies to their organisation, coupling it with the internal information that they have already sourced and looked into meticulously.
That does, however, come with a downside to it, as CFOs could become overwhelmed with information if they try to look into too much all at once. This could result in confusion and the over-complication of otherwise simple decisions. Though information is the most valuable asset available to CFOs, it can also pose as just as much a pitfall.
An Important Role
In summary, being a CFO comes with many challenges and downsides, just as any role in technology does. It is a stressful position, to begin with, though in this world of ever-evolving technology and growing trends, they are forced to stay on top of their game.
Although this can cause much stress and can give them a much harder time, it can also be of a great benefit as they have access to so much more than anyone who has worked in that role previously.
As in every walk of life: it is all about adapting, learning and evolving to become more efficient and prolific in your respective position. And trends in today’s technological world are most definitely forcing that upon the CFOs of this generation.
LSI Keywords:
- Technology
- CFO
- Finance
- Organisation
- SAP
- Data
- Mobility
- Platform
- Cloud
- Information
- Business
- Systems