The Digital CFO: A Roadmap for Digital Transformation

Finance is at a crossroad. It lacks alignment on purpose and definition of path forward to become a true strategic partner that glues the company together and all executives consult before making major decisions. The core of this problem is Finance leaders without clarity of vision and voice to the value of Digital Transformation and a defined roadmap to get there.

”The Digital CFO” is about the three central concepts of The Digital Roadmap of 1) Digital Values, 2) Digital Culture, and 3) Digital Skillset that answer the corresponding questions of 1) Are you Creating Value?, 2) Are you Ready?, and 3) Are you Capable? to operate in the digital world.

In general, Finance organizations have not found the recipe to value creation in the new digital world a.k.a. Digital Values. This is not for lack of demand from the business executives, who want more Finance involvement and leadership around value creating activities. Rather, it’s from a mindset that too often conflates accounting with commercial finance, and a neanderthal reduction of technology to all things Excel, BI, or ERP.

Crossing the canyon from digital failure to success takes more than just a change in the Finance executive’s mindset to value creation, it also includes the integration of analytics tools, people skills, and process changes to build a Digital Culture where these components are aligned.

Digital Transformation is not hard nor expensive (especially considering the ROI). What it does require is a recognition and knowledge of the application of the Digital Skillset, meaning the “hard” and “soft” skills and discipline to attain and deploy them. Digital Hard skills are the tools and techniques for Automation and AI-Enabled Analytics (that go beyond Excel, BI and ERP) and the ability to use those, whilst the soft skills are people’s ability to communicate, collaborate with the business, understand the business operating model, and the company philosophy.

This book is for CFOs and aspiring CFOs to deliver a clearly defined Roadmap to their digital journey that eventually will earn them the notation, The Digital CFO, with the mindset and an organization to play a pivotal role that provides insight that influences decisions and foresight that sets the strategic direction of a company.