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Three Finance Directors views on how tech is changing finance

23rd Sep 2022
Brought to you by
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Award-winning cloud accounting software for multi-company businesses.

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How is tech changing finance and what should FDs and accountants do about it? That was the huge topic Joanna McGovern (Finance Director, Chopstix), Mark Moore (Group Finance Director, New Statesman Media) and Darren Cran (COO, AccountsIQ) discussed in our recent webinar. There’s a link to the recording at the end, but here are the three key takeaways.

1. What impact is tech having on your finance team?

Joanna: “Following an explosion of online sales and home deliveries during the pandemic, we’re in automation frenzy. Whenever we see something manual, we ask: how can we automate it?

“Our most impactful automation has been AP. We work with iCompleat; it integrates seamlessly with AccountsIQ and it all flows through with almost no manual intervention. In other hospitality businesses I’ve worked in, there have been six to seven people in AP; we have one and they mostly deal with queries rather than processing.”

Joanna headshot

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joanna McGovern, Group Finance Director, Chopstix 

 

Mark: “We’ve transformed from a traditional publishing house to a digital media business. This has involved eliminating as many manual processes and interventions as possible and moving away from bespoke clunky tech with patches. Now, we’re using API interfaces to integrate key tools to make our business more efficient and cost effective.”

Mark headshot

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Moore, Finance Director, New Statesman Media 

2. How does this new finance tech benefit your business as a whole?

Darren: “For business data to be useful, it needs to be timely, reliable and structured. That’s a new mindset for many finance teams; to be thinking more about data and less about processing transactions. The right finance system enables you to step back, look at key drivers, and have meaningful conversations across the business that can open up new opportunities.”

Darren headshot

 

 

 

 

Darren Cran, COO, AccountsIQ 

Joanna: “We now have much more understanding of what’s driving the data. Behind every key line on the P&L, we have a suite of analysis to make sure we understand what’s happening.

“For example, we can now see how much chicken is wasted each week by individual restaurants and exactly how many team members we need in each restaurant on specific days and times. We’ve got all the operational metrics and we can see where the leaks are with a click of a button. That saves us a lot of money.”

Mark: “Our new finance mindset is about moving away from processing transactions to producing dynamic data about how the business is performing right now. AccountsIQ has enabled us to offshore many transactional processes, improve cash flow management and shorten our working capital cycle.”

 

3. How is the finance role changing?

Mark: “We’re focusing more on developing our tech skills so we can partner with other parts of the business. For example, different members of our finance team now meet with senior business managers every week. We report activity on a live basis to support them in their decision making. We’re also doing a lot more forecasting and scenario modelling.”

Joanna: “We’re taking on extra responsibilities for systems and data integration across the business. All eyes are on finance now for data, we’re like the data gatekeepers.”

Darren: “There’s a sense that the ideal candidate profile for a CFO role has changed in the last 10 years. Traditionally, it’s been about audit (and, of course, you still have to keep your house in order!). But now you also need to provide more in-depth data analysis and be more tech savvy. This trend will only increase as we see more tech in the shape of deep learning, voice technology and conversational AI, coming into the finance space.”

 

Learn more

Find out more about AccountsIQ’s integrated accounting software. AccountsIQ is integrated with a large number of other software already and can be integrated with other custom systems through its open API.

 

Watch the CFO webinar back

Data Driven Insights: The Role of Technology for Today's CFO - YouTube

Thanks to Joanna, Mark and Darren for sharing their insights and to Pete Swabey, Editor in Chief at Tech Monitor, for hosting a fascinating session.

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