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I have recently read a whitepaper published by Sage Australia on CFO3.0 and what struck me is that this is exactly what my vision for 118Accounting is. I have dissected the whitepaper below, with extracts of what I believe are the key points.

CFO 3.0 is simply the evolution of finance and accounting function where 1.0 is being able to explain what happened, 2.0 explains why it happened, and 3.0 will predict what will happen, and how to make it happen.

While today’s CFOs have been tasked with analysing the past, tomorrow’s CFO is expected to be a visionary, using and analysing data to predict the future direction of the organisation, uncover hidden opportunities and close information gaps. Kerry Agiasotis, Executive Vice President, APAC, Sage

Moving to a cloud based accounting platform gives you a layer of security that you would battle to replicate in a desktop environment (refer to my first blogpost on security benefits of cloud platforms Blog 1 – Easy automation wins for SME’s)

An essential step in any digital transformation journey is to challenge the way that things were done in the past. Any cloud accounting conversion process must involve a thorough review of all business critical systems and processes, to unlock efficiencies to free people up to focus on delivering better value to their customers, and spend less time on inefficient and ineffective internal processes.

Many businesses are battling to find the right talent to help them on this journey, nor can they afford this talent full time. This is why outsourced digital accounting firms like www.118Accounting.co.za are perfectly positioned to provide project based resources to implement and unlock these technologies, initially on a project basis, together with on-going post implementation support if required.

The answers to the above questions in my mind are very simple and clear. The value for finance and accounting teams lies in focussing on projects that impact the businesses customers. If a finance intervention helps the SME win more customers, or helps them provide better services to their customers, then the intervention is focussing in the right place.

Or more simplistically put, the goal of cloud accounting Is to make sure that the accounting team is moving at the same pace as the rest of the business.

I also come across many finance and accounting professionals who fear that they will be replaced by technology.

I attended an AI in Healthcare workshop recently, and a Radiologist who has built and presented some fascinating AI technology in her domain, made a profound statement. Radiologists won’t be replaced by AI, they will be replaced by Radiologists who use AI. For this post, just replace Radiologist with Accountant!

In conclusion, It’s no longer enough to look at past data and reflect on what has happened or what could have been.

Today’s CFO needs to be a real-time analyst, who can marry up multiple touch points of immediate data to quickly determine the state of the P&L.

Tomorrow’s CFO will be a visionary – harnessing the ability to translate increasing amounts of raw

data into accessible insight, predicting the direction of the business, uncovering hidden opportunities while closing gaps within an organisation that is increasingly data and insights driven.

This is the vision of 118Accounting – Accounting | Data | Insights.

The full whitepaper is available at https://www.sage.com/en-au/blog/cfos-driving-digital-transformation/