Finance Business Partnering is top of the agenda for most CFO’s

It’s time for Finance to transform from a cost center to a profit driver. We do so by elevating ourselves from transactional activities to becoming value-adding business partners.

In this episode, Syed Zeeshan Pervez, CFO of FLOW Progressive Logistics in KSA, Bahrain and UAE will discuss with leading advisor to senior finance and FP&A leaders, Anders Liu-Lindberg on how to drive the transformation, and the journey from being a controller to becoming a business partner and what work should look like in a profit driving finance function. 

It’s easy to predict what work needs to be done in the finance function. We can just look at the annual wheel. It includes annual reporting, month-end close, quarterly forecasting, budgeting, and strategic planning. It should prompt us to imagine life in a futuristic finance function where work is done very differently. In this final #FinanceMaster Show about the annual wheel in Finance we will therefore consider how processes in the annual wheel could be carried out in the future and what work finance professionals would be doing.

The annual wheel doesn’t allow for much free time regardless if you’re in accounting or finance. Still, it’s important to carve out time for improvement projects and in this week’s show we’ll look at when and how. If you don’t improve the processes in your annual wheel you might as well buy a hamster wheel and run it day and night – it’ll be the same feeling.

Strategic planning happens at least once per year but mostly finance teams just consolidate the data. In this episode, Anders presents a process for how to get involved in strategic planning. It’s much more than just an update to your strategy – it’s a chance to change course or emphasize on actions that are working. Finance should bring the insights to the table and drive the right strategic choices, and we will show you how to!

Most companies have started to do quarterly forecasting as they recognize the budget won’t work as a forecast for long. The challenge is that in some companies the forecasting process has become almost as lengthy as budgeting. Let’s explore how to do it differently as you should be able to do it in a week in this week's episode of #FinanceMaster. 

Enough bad has been said about budgeting – let’s explore the good parts.

You can use it to drive in-depth dialogues about business developments with business leaders. Don’t use it as the ultimate truth about the future, nor should you allocate 100% of your resources.

In this week’s show we will discuss how to optimize the process by ensuring management guidance and buy-in upfront to avoid changing the numbers multiple times over.

History tells us the budget won’t go away – instead, let's make the most of it! Here’s a list of other good budgeting tips.

Month-end reporting is a never-ending cycle but what’s the purpose? In this week’s #FinanceMaster Show Anders explores that further. At the core it’s about informing management about past performance and discussing actions for future performance. Too often we’re stuck in the past though so we’ll give you some hacks to improve the process by breaking down the process into atoms and discuss how to make the reporting more impactful using best practice principles for executive communication.

If you’re as old as me, you probably remember the song “U Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer. Another thing we cannot touch, at least in finance and accounting, is the Annual Report. It’s almost like the Holy Grail or pinnacle of the work we do in the finance function. If we were to suggest any radical changes to the notion of publishing an annual report, the finance profession would likely bring out the pitchforks. This week’s episode of #FinanceMaster tests that notion… 

Finance is a function of traditions. Every year we repeat the same old processes. Annual reporting, budgeting, month-end close, etc. We try to do things more efficiently, utilize technology where possible, and move our time spent to more value-adding activities. Yet, fundamentally we’re still doing the same as we’ve done for decades. 

In this episode of #FinanceMaster, Anders dives into how we can do things differently. It’s time we hack the Annual Wheel in Finance!

The application of AI in business is long gone as a philosophical question. AI is driving business decisions daily worldwide and there’s much to gain by AI-enabling your business processes. However, in many finance functions, the application of AI is still in its infancy. This leaves finance professionals frustrated as they are overworked running countless manual spreadsheet-driven processes that add little value and take a lot of time. 

In this episode of #FinanceMaster, Anders discusses with Bill Primerano, Worldwide Tech Sales Leader, IBM Data & AI - Business Analytics about how to AI-enable your forecast process.