Changing Role of Accounting & Finance

Today’s business world has been facing new challenges: globalisation of the workforce, wide dissemination of knowledge, digitalisation, uncertainties and even turbulence in consumer preferences and competition, and distortion of natural resources and environmental risks becoming much closer and serious. Parallel with this transition, the role of finance in the organizations has been changing over the years towards creating valuable insights to the business, challenging, supporting and influencing decisions for operations and strategies.

The new role of finance and accounting involves

· Business Partnering

· Risk Management

· Digital Transformation

· Corporate Performance Management

· Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues

· Strategic Management

We will explore the above in our coming blogs.

The agenda is heavier today for the finance professionals and there is an important change in terms of mindset, ways of working, skill sets, and in terms of the tools to be deployed and used.

Here are some suggestions for finance professionals to prepare for this change:

* Always pursue a growth mindset, not a fixed one

* Know the business dynamics, be a part of the business, do not focus only on financial issues, learn the key drivers of customers, and what they expect from the business and understand your industry

* Be curious to learn what the new developments are in technology and stay up to date: Read the business journals, spare time for internet surfing, and invite IT professionals for demos, join webinars and conferences

* Go for professional certifications and embrace learning: ACCA, CMA, CIMA are high quality professional bodies to give some examples. These help with both technical and soft skills and expand the horizon of the finance professionals.

* Benchmark and compare your own and your teams’ skills with peers in the same industry, at home and abroad, spot and work on what can be improved. Invest in talent and develop their technical, digital and soft skills

* As the finance teams cannot meet all of the requirements of the changing business environment in addition to the current ways of working and current responsibilities, be open to alternative, creative ways of working, such as outsourcing certain activities, working in virtual networks with remote finance professionals, automating data entry, redesigning and automating processes with the help of digital tools and consultants

* You cannot know it all: Work with experts on areas such as digital transformation, management accounting, digital transformation, tax, legal issues, and data management outside your company, and work with HR in finding ways to develop the finance talent, and work with IT in developing new tools, new analyses embracing financial and non-financial data as well as on cybersecurity issues.