Data Analytics Helping Accountant Excel! Role Of Data Science In Accounting.
If the C-suite were to shape a rock band focused on the standard positions, the guitarist would be the ambitious CEO, and the resourceful COO would play lead guitar. The level-headed CFO will possibly be positioned as the guitarist, a significant band member, but put in the background and tasked primarily withholding the band on track to help the other members shine. This perception of the CFO as a back-office number cruncher who controls schedules monitors costs and maintains the lights on might have been accurate in the past, but the new CFO is squarely at the heart of the corporate strategy. Data’s core position in today’s business climate is the impetus for this transition. Today the CFO is the company’s co-pilot, finding the most successful clients, evaluating risk through scenario preparation, measuring customer loyalty through data collection, and designing new KPIs. Corporate boards are continually considering a future CFO in terms of whether he or she will take over as CEO eventually. CFOs should have global and diverse experience, be up-to-date on technology, be able to recognize and recruit the right talent and, most importantly, know how to lead, as per one of the KPMG Global CEO Survey. The study also found that 85 percent of CEOs agree that the most significant strategic advantage a CFO can bring to a company is to use financial data to achieve sustainable growth. CFOs need new enterprise performance management (EPM) tools to serve this strategic role— and many see the cloud’s ability to unleash the power of their data and turn their business into an analytics powerhouse. CFOs and the finance department will need a live view into all business areas, with resources that allow them to provide real-time analyzes of changing situations, suggest actions, and offer effective strategic planning and forecasting. In a recent CFOs survey of Oracle as well as other business leaders, 90 percent of the executives said that the ability to create data-based insights is very crucial to the success of their organization. Still, more than half questioned the strength of their organization to handle large data inflows. So the more data an organization uses, the more reliable the research will be. So, almost half of the financial decision-makers in Europe and the Middle East, for example, expanded the number of data sources they evaluate to better understand the effect of this surprising change after the Brexit vote. How To End The Tyranny Of The Spreadsheet (Data Science In Accounting) In business, where you always stand depends on where you are seated, and the finance department is well placed to offer a holistic view of the company. The CFO’s ability to link key areas around the enterprise— marketing, supply chain, manufacturing, services, and human capital management — to build a holistic, real-time business image is vital to risk management and value creation. That calls for the right resources. The ubiquitous spreadsheet is one adversary of such real-time analytics. Consider how an annual budget is produced by the finance department of the business or any department within the organization. The budget process is mostly done through a series of spreadsheets that are sent to various stakeholders, with the usual concerns: Is this the latest version? Who made the most recent alterations? Was the data correct, or have the consolidation process made mistakes? Usually, the finance department spends most of its time tracking down and checking the data— and not enough time evaluating it. Due to the many data systems and reporting tools acquired over the years, organizations rely heavily on spreadsheets and Data Analytics in Finance to organize the information. Because data is siloed in their respective units, to build budgets and strategies, LOB members must first dig into the data. Finance then spends massive amounts of time testing and rolling this unconnected data into more detailed predictions and plans. Finance teams with Data Analytics in Finance need to build better models for financial and organizational improvements if businesses are to stay ahead of the market. Today’s digital finance team is moving from simple, traditional transaction analysis to more sophisticated predictive analysis, such as statistical-based modeling, dynamic market management, and risk-adjusted business simulations. To do so, they need access to a centralized data system that drills both intensely across transactional data, and broadly through core functional divisions of the organization. Finance companies need to use analytics that interacts with cross-functional drivers such as customer loyalty, process management, and business decision-making. And, unlike in the past, these observations are obtained in real-time, not just at daily reporting times— providing a continuous view of the company’s birds. Agile CFOs Measure Non-Financial Data, Too In addition to having a profound impact on existing business models, digitization and globalization have also changed the way we evaluate business performance. Today, intangible assets like brands, customer relations, intellectual property, and expertise have become the primary drivers of the overall success of a business. Measuring the success of a company in all of these fields involves data from around the organization. It is a challenge for finance to track these non-financial key performance indicators (KPIs) with the same degree of methodological rigor it gives to financial metrics— like productivity and return on investment. A new report by the American Institute of CPAs and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants on financial leaders found that the most forward-thinking CFOs are more likely to monitor non-financial KPIs such as talent pool, customer experience, business process performance, brand credibility, and competitive intelligence; Therefore, sustainability and social responsibility are also increasingly relevant for consumers, workers, and the result, and are steps that CFOs will recognize What’s unique in monitoring this information is not just that the data is non-financial; it’s unstructured too. Many of the data regarding brand credibility and consumer loyalty may come from social media, for example. CFOs need to rapidly track, analyze, and evaluate unstructured data and collaborate with organization-wide subject matter experts to develop new performance metrics that incorporate this data. As a result, KPI
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