Argyle Executive Forum: 2016 Chief Financial Officer Leadership

The rapid pace of Digital Technology and Globalization.

Recently I had the opportunity to speak to 100 CFO’s, Controllers and Finance leaders from companies ranging from medium size to giant in size gathered for a day at the Omni Hotel in Los Angeles. The audience was there to network as well as to listen and ask questions of the series of keynote speakers, practitioner panels and “thought leaders” from sponsor corporations. Argyle did a wonderful job of organizing and running a very effective and efficient conference. It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to participate.

Argyle stated up front that the forum “will explore which approaches and strategies will cement the Chief Financial Officer’s place at the helm of the company as they steer their businesses forward in this volatile economy” and that it did! The big issues identified and wholeheartedly endorsed by participants related to the changing world and unprecedented levels of change, risk, volatility, the rapid pace of digital technology and globalization.

My presentation focused on the pace of change and the need to employ Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software to automate compliance reporting (hindsight) so that finance staff would have significantly more time to monitor variances from plan and emerging trends to gain insight on what changes, risk, and opportunities faced the organization.

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I concluded that now is the time to hire and train finance and accounting staff from the ranks of the millennial generation to create a team of professionals who have been raised with and acclimatized to evolving technology, risk, change, volatility, and globalization. With that sort of team, focused on the future, they can provide management with more than analysis of variances by undertaking “what-if” analysis, on fly forecast updates and simulation modeling to make recommendations about the potential business decision. The purpose of the future focused analysis being to provide decision support to leaders in order to allow them to make the most informed decisions possible and to create value for shareholders.