Three Key CFO Trends for the Modern Finance Leader

In the following blog, Heini Olsson Sihvonen, Senior Advisor at Staria, provides insights on current considerations essential for CFOs. 

Establish your ESG reporting 

Many larger companies are currently preparing for ESG reporting to be aligned with the EU's CSRD directive. It is essential to meet the legal requirements – to review which reports and what information you need to create and get authorized. But it’s also about thinking one step further: How do we continue to conduct sustainable business? We have a climate crisis that will affect us, and those who want to be financially sustainable in the long term are looking at a longer horizon. 

CFOs who succeed in building a management system around ESG and integrating sustainability thinking into target management and reward models are at the forefront of the transition and can future-proof their business model. At Staria, we can help clients meet the reporting requirements imposed by CSRD and also incorporate the tracking of sustainability data as part of their other KPI and operational management. 

Well-designed and implemented business systems and processes can provide enormous efficiency advantages for your business. 

See the opportunities with generative AI 

We see that generative AI has created new opportunities for finance functions and other business areas. AI tools can, for example, predict accounting codes on invoices, perform a preliminary analysis of the most significant deviations between budget and actual results – and point out discrepancies that CFOs and their teams should investigate further. Machines are taking over more of the numerical and manual work from accountants so that they can instead focus on more in-depth analysis and business discussions with the organization. 

However, when it comes to AI, it is important to remember the significance of specifying requirements and using the right technological solutions based on the company's desired business and financial processes. Well-designed and implemented business systems and processes can provide enormous efficiency advantages to a finance function, even without massive in-house AI investments. This is because most technology providers are developing their own AI solutions as part of their business systems that they offer. At Staria, we have developed our own AI solution, Staria Mind, to enhance our operational efficiency and employee experience. .

Dive deeper into your data with BI solutions 

CFOs are expected to provide the organization with comprehensive business insights, encompassing both financial and operational information. There is an enormous amount of data available to companies today. With increased access, finance functions need to prioritize and discern what is truly important. This puts pressure on the right skills. Without a clear business understanding of the data available and how it connects to the company's business, it becomes just noise. It becomes even more important to learn to understand the company's business logic and often ask the question: 'What do we need to know to help the company achieve its goals?' Additionally, it is important to have fundamental technical data and process competence to understand where the data comes from, what quality it has, and how to extract the data and information that the company needs for its operational management. 

At Staria, we help our clients incorporate BI solutions into ongoing deliveries and maintain a dialogue so they can discern what they need to prioritize. A well-implemented BI solution provides the right information at the right time, allowing you to make sufficiently quick decisions and know when to act. This is what determines whether a company can succeed on its growth journey.