What new roles, if any, are required for a digitally focused finance function? Where do you draw the line between simply adjusting current responsibilities and creating new roles?
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CFO7 months ago
Attracting and retaining talent is challenging nowadays. We try to leverage technology by subscribing to a few SaaS applications. These applications come with a lot of tutorials and online videos, and we have great people on our team who are willing to study these and learn. We invested in some existing people on our team in their professional development. However, as we grow and expand, we may need to hire an FP&A professional to join the team.Fractional CFO/FP&A Consultant7 months ago
I always encouraged my team to constantly learn and stay up to date on the latest technology. I had a team member who didn't have a strong finance background, but they were great at data and technology. This was beneficial for us as she helped us get the data out much faster and we could be more strategic. Regarding whether to create a new role versus adjusting responsibilities, I think it depends on the team member and their skill set. If the role is going to change drastically, it might be better to create a new role.Finance Manager7 months ago
In our small finance team, we've included a business analyst with a strong data analysis skill set. One of our major challenges has been managing the revenue recognition of long-term contracts. We've been able to collaborate with our business analyst to build models pulling directly from the data to automate the amortization process. This has helped us build things in a much more scalable way. This is something that I haven't seen in previous finance teams that I've worked with and it has added a lot of value to our team. We're a startup and we're looking to scale quickly over the next few years, so building the finance function in a way that can handle quick scaling is something that we're trying to be very mindful about.CFO7 months ago
Good point, Aaron. The challenge arises when you have existing roles and people in place and you're transitioning from a traditional ERP to a system that provides data much quicker. What we found is that roles develop around gathering data, not leaving much time for analysis. If you're doing it right, you flip that so now data is coming out quicker and you need people who know what to do with that data. We found that some people can pivot to that and some people can't, leading to a skill set imbalance.