MANAGEMENT
How Finance Leaders
Set the Pace
for Businesses to Thrive By Daniel Oh
N
o preceding crisis in our lifetime could have prepared Canadian businesses for the impact of COVID-19, which transformed a swath of industries at an unprecedented scale. Yet even as vaccination rates increase and workers slowly return to the office, fewer than 40 percent of businesses with fewer than 100 employees have incorporated technology such as collaboration tools and cloud solutions into their operations. And with 77 percent of Canadian workers now demanding a flexible work environment, it’s clear that to thrive well into the future, businesses need to keep transforming, and quickly. Which raises the question — who leads an organization’s innovation efforts? Many would say the CTO or CIO, but that isn’t necessarily true. While the former oversees the implementation of new technology and the latter keeps it running, the choice of which technology to adopt often lies with the finance department — the CFO. It should no longer be a shock that the executive who oversees the company’s spending also has an instrumental role in driving its digital transformation.
The CFO 3.0 Globally, CFOs play a huge role in balancing business continuity with planning for an uncertain future. PwC’s CFO Pulse report
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TOTAL FINANCE
found the pandemic left 60 percent of CFOs worldwide concerned about the impact of another global economic downturn, while a nearly equal number (58 percent) remain worried about another wave of infections. Yet it’s worth asking what we expect of CFOs in this time of uncertainty. With cashflow remaining a challenge for many businesses and governments doing their best to support them, many CFOs have focused on choosing where to allocate grants. However, as one CPA Canada executive aptly put it, no company wants to survive for one year only, and it falls to the CFO to ensure it continues to thrive well after the situation has passed. Fortunately, today’s CFOs are better prepared for shifting circumstances than many of their C-suite colleagues. It wasn’t too long ago that their role was largely that of company historian, reviewing previous company performance to inform future recommendations. They were among the first to harness technology in their organizations too, which transformed them into analyzers of real-time data. Their successors — CFO 3.0 — have become visionaries, basing their decisions on how best to prepare their businesses for what lies ahead. The importance of this visionary aspect has never been more apparent than during the past year. According to Statistics Canada, only one in 10 businesses with fewer than 100 employees adopted digital technology during the pandemic that helped them move operations or sales online — but signs point to those investments paying off. Around one in
10 businesses with fewer than 100 employees also made 50 percent or more of their total sales online last year, an increase of up to 100 percent from 2019. The conclusion is clear: Rather than analyzing a situation and responding in a way that worked best in the past, today’s financial leaders need to predict and innovate. Sage research indicates these changes have been in the making for some time. A whopping 97 percent of financial professionals in Canada say their roles have significantly changed in the past five years, with 70 percent given full responsibility over their company’s digital transformation. Moreover, most financial decision makers (90 percent) are automating processes to drive efficiencies in their organization. COVID-19 has likely pushed the remainder into the informal role of Chief
FALL 2021
