Automation will Reshape Finance Jobs by 2025

The rise of digitalisation in business operations and the growing availability of new technologies has both proven to increase efficiency within the finance function as well as shown why a new form of leadership — an operating or “wartime” CFO — is needed to charge the process.

“CFOs that effectively lead and navigate transformation will add roles to their leadership team to address analytics and decision support, finance IT and global process ownership,” said Cole in a statement.

The goal of “autonomous finance” refers to the idea of organisations being able to deliver finance capabilities through “processes and activities that are partly governed, and majority operated by self-learning software agents that optimise front-, middle- and back-office operations,” according to Gartner.

“Mindset is the hardest barrier to overcome in achieving autonomous finance — followed by talent (or expertise),” said Cole in an emailed response to questions.

The role of the CFO has been changing drastically in recent years, with their responsibilities especially creeping into technology and IT-related spending.

Both inflation and labour market shortages have pressured CFOs to justify labour-based models, the survey said, with such economic headwinds pushing organisations away from the growth-at-all-costs mindset.

“As more finance resources are directed towards digital transformation, it becomes apparent there is a need for deep process expertise, and for project management offices to provide governance and coordinate these initiatives,” Cole said in the statement.

Meanwhile, technology spending can offer much “greater reliability and efficiency for scalability than the labour-based method traditionally used to deliver finance capabilities,” the research found.

Click here to read the full article at CFO Dive.