There are currently no optimization projects in companies that are not sold internally with the keyword digitization. Process optimization sounds elaborate, harmonization sounds like resistance and centralization is almost an old hat.
Since digitization sounds better already! That's how you're up to date! But what is that exactly? And what does digitization have to do with finance?
Basically, digitization is nothing new. The replacement of the typewriter by the computer was a digitization of data storage (away from the Leitz folder to the Windows Explorer). If we talk about ERP systems and in particular about SAP, then "digitalization" has been pushed forward for 40 years.
What is new is the speed with which new technologies are conquering the market. And with it, the impact and the newly created opportunities that result from it. Digitization is constantly creating new business areas, new opportunities and new products! When these opportunities are exploited, the entire organization changes internally: new production processes, new sales channels, new revenue models, new forms of organization. In summary: New business models! And these must be controlled in the same way as the previous ones - but with different methods, processes and content than the previous business model.
As a driver of this reorientation, Finance must realign corporate management to the changed business model. Not reactive, but proactive. That's why it starts at the cutting edge of business development and goes through all facets of the control processes.
If, on the other hand, the business model remains basically the same, digitization can also lead to far-reaching changes in the field of finance. Digital techniques make it possible to improve the transactional processes and to optimize the analysis and control systems. Transactionally, RPA solutions (RPA = robotic process automation) are leading to an ever increasing degree of automation in accounting, thus increasing process efficiency as well as data quality. The requirements of both accountants and other parties involved in the process, such as purchasing, department etc., are constantly changing. With full automation, the accountant becomes the process owner and overseer of the correct process execution.
The optimization of the analysis and control systems also aims at process efficiency and increasing the data quality: Reporting and planning will in future be automated, real-time retrievable, and much more databased and less intuitive than before. Here, too, the role of all those involved changes: transactional tasks in controlling are carried out automatically, controlling in the sense of the control thus becomes even more decentralized in the future, and the central controller becomes much more the method and process guardian than before.
You have the speed to optimize the internal processes in your own hands. But not the speed with which the market moves. Whether digitization is the catalyst for change as an external or finance-internal trigger, the same applies to both cases: the changes brought about by digital techniques have a holistic effect on the finance organization! A singular change such as The replacement of the pdf monthly reports with a self-service reporting ensures completely different controlling processes:
- Controlling tasks are decentralized in the departments
- Analysis options in the departments require a decentralization of the controlling know-how
- Drill-downs require increased data quality across all levels (it is no longer the printed page in the pdf but the real-time data quality available on all hierarchies!)
- Data governance and data quality require top priority
Therefore, always pay attention to the entire organization if you want to further digitize your systems and processes. There are far more profound questions than can be surmised at first:
- What role does controlling and accounting play?
- Who has the data sovereignty?
Is the central controller becoming a process manager and controlling only decentralized? We help you to find out what digitization really means for you. Where do you have short-term potential, what is the basis for this and how does it affect the long-term?
