“Chief financial officers will be there from multinationals, large public sector organisations, and the indigenous sector. They will be looking to learn about opportunities for financial leadership, to network, and to take time out and think about what is coming down the road,” says Lawrence Vesey of Sia Partners.
It is not a technical accounting summit, he points out. “The professional bodies cover all that really well. This is much more about the key role CFOs play in relation to the stewardship of a business.”
CFOs kept books balanced, managed forecasting and replanning, and delivered accountability and stewardship responsibilities at agms in a completely new manner during the pandemic, which provided a huge amount of learning, he says. It highlighted the importance of an organisation’s systems too, whether in relation to data, documents and workflows, or the ways in which they collaborate.
‘This is about the key role CFOs play in relation to the stewardship of a business’
“Now it is about what all that means for the future of work, issues such as holding on to staff, the impact of hybrid working and the pressure to have return to office guidelines. On top of that, CFOs have new technologies to consider such as the metaverse, which may turn out to be transitory or prove to be something transformative,” he explains.
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Current and evolving technologies CFOs need to keep up with include artificial intelligence, data analytics and robotic process automation, all of which reach right across organisations now, from manufacturing and sales to operations and distribution. “Finance is in the middle of all of this, because technology will impact directly on costs and on the agility of the business,” he says.
CFOs and their finance teams are developing new skills to cope. “It used to be that the key skills finance staff required were technical accounting and Excel. Increasingly you need knowledge of all these other technologies too, so you can influence what and where technology should be pushed in your organisation, both understanding underlying patterns and trends, but also having an informed view in terms of new investment,” he explains.
The external business environment is also impacting on the CFO function in new ways. The war in Ukraine has seen sanctions and anti-money laundering, previously the domain of banks, becoming important for a range of internationally trading organisations.
“At EU level, there is greater spotlight on the beneficial ownership of businesses, in addition to existing regulatory demands, all of which will feed back on to organisations. CFOs find themselves in a position where they need to know what all of this this means for their business, and take a position on it,” says Vesey.
Increasingly you need knowledge of other technologies too, so you can influence what and where it should be pushed in your organisation, in terms of investment
Right now, inflation and recession are having a bearing on investment decisions. Having been in business for three decades, Vesey’s team has experienced such challenges before. “When you look back you can always see the people who made the brave decisions. Of course, it’s difficult to be sure what to do at the time, but not doing anything is generally not a good idea,” he says.
On top of all the knowledge sharing, the Financial Leadership Summit is a great opportunity to network. “The feedback from attendees is always the same – they appreciate the opportunity it gives them to hear different points of view, to meet someone a little further down a particular path they are on, and to get different perspectives from different sectors,” adds Vesey. We look forward to meeting this year’s attendees later this month.
Sia Partners is a next-generation management consulting firm and pioneer of Consulting 4.0. We offer a unique blend of AI and design capabilities, augmenting traditional consulting to deliver superior value to our clients. With 2,600 consultants in 19 countries and expertise in more than 30 sectors and services, we optimise client projects worldwide. Through our Consulting for Good approach, we strive for next-level impact by developing innovative CSR solutions for our clients, making sustainability a lever for profitable transformation.