2. Assessing the viability of new business models
Established businesses, as they follow ongoing disruptions, are trying to think ahead in digital terms. For CFOs, this is an opportunity to drive growth and participate in developing new business models, enabled by digitisation.
Relevant markets will look different. There may be new revenue streams. CFOs should collaborate with colleagues from different departments to help them properly evaluate the possibilities.
3. Promoting cross-functional digital innovations
CFOs can estimate potential financial returns from cross-functional data sharing and re-engineering of processes. Digital transformation across business functions may bring much higher benefits. For example, for transforming customer experience, finance professionals can help marketing, sales, or even product development departments to understand the value of analysing customer behaviour across all customer touchpoints.
4. Advice on IT operations
There are many cloud computing providers today (Amazon, Microsoft, Google and several others). An increasing number of companies are getting their work done in the data centres of these companies. Spending on cloud services continues to grow. CFOs can therefore help CIOs decide whether a shift to cloud services makes financial sense.
Finance professionals can prepare a rigorous economic case for where digital business processes and IT infrastructure should be located. It is not merely about cost reduction but also the capacity to provide high quality, data-intensive details of customer experiences. Should the business use some cloud options? CFOs can help with the economics of such a decision. This is the conclusion of cfo.com.
-jk-