The role of the finance leader has been undergoing a fundamental shift. Traditionally tasked with keeping an eye on financial records, overseeing past business performance, and ensuring that tactical, repetitive practices like the financial close are completed satisfactorily, the CFO is now becoming a strategic business partner. For professional services firms, where strategic intelligence about the future is needed both internally and for external clients, finance functions must take their own advice.
Data is essential to the CFO’s success in this new, forward-looking role. The right information can provide insight on operational issues like streamlining costs and improving processes – but it can also shed light on evolving customer expectations, the competitive landscape, and unpredictable market upsets. For CFO's in professional services, this level of knowledge is invaluable.
But major challenges remain. Data silos, inconsistency and lack of standards are yet to be overcome; the integration of finance data with internal operational, HR or client data is a major stumbling block.
Join the New Statesman Media Group, in partnership with Sage, to hear strategies for finance leaders in consultancies, accounting firms, legal firms and other professional services as they drive data-led transformation within their businesses. We will explore the changing role of the finance leader, and what is still needed for CFO's and their counterparts to meet the evolving needs of industry-leading firms in this dynamic sector.
