Originally appeared in PYMNTS.com
As their role evolves, CFOs can make an impact by embracing digital transformation, Corcentric President and COO Matt Clark explains in the latest PYMNTS eBook, “What’s Your Plan? Payments Strategies for a Strong 2022 Finish.”
With the start of Q4 and 2023 planning underway at businesses across the U.S., economic and supply chain challenges continue making it difficult to know what to expect in the coming year. As Corcentric looks ahead, we’re focused on assisting chief financial officers and their teams in tackling their biggest challenges and achieving their desired outcomes.
Factors Inhibiting Forward Movement
In our nearly daily conversations with CFOs, the hurdles mentioned most often are how to improve cash flow, mitigate risks and improve the efficiency, visibility and predictability of finance and accounting processes and data. Yet, several headwinds hinder progress.
As CFOs steer strategic financial direction, their role continues to expand to include more non-financial responsibilities, and recent studies show the number of functional areas reporting to CFOs will continue to increase.
In addition to a shortage of finance professionals, existing workloads are burdened with manual tasks and processes. The mixture of the so-called “Great Resignation” and an uptick in remote work operations has transformed the back office of finance and accounting into micro-offices.
Amid internal challenges is the perfect storm of macroeconomic, market, industry, and supply chain volatility. Trade partnerships consuming more resources on the supplier and buyer sides is just one example of the many dynamics that are causing unprecedented uncertainty in businesses of all sizes and across all industries.
Where Change Can Be Affected
CFOs may not be able to change a lot of these factors; however, they can make a business impact for themselves, their teams, and the overall business by embracing digital transformation.
Organizations are realizing that addressing challenges by piecing together point solutions that target acute pain points with acute solutions is not working. As expectations change, they are moving toward partnering with technology-enabled managed service providers to implement a well-rounded solution.
Through a combination of technology, payment capabilities and services across the entire procurement, accounts payable, accounts receivable and treasury lifecycle, they can optimize inter- and intra-company processes for how they purchase, pay and get paid across the source-to-settle continuum.
Discovering the Benefits of Digitization
For this reason, 71% of CFOs surveyed say they have increased their use of digital payments since 2020, according to “Business Payments Digitization,” a PYMNTS and Corcentric report. Respondents lauded worthwhile benefits like helping maintain a healthy balance sheet, improve working capital, enhance efficiencies, reduce fraud and lower costs.
CFOs embracing digitization can create a B2B commerce lifecycle control tower dictating results without siloes. It increases control of the cash conversion cycle, opens access to capital, expands margins, drives revenue, and enrichens the transaction experience for everyone. Plus, healthier business partnerships and less stress on employees help provide work-life balance, aiding in talent retention and acquisition.
With so much unpredictability ahead, having this kind of financial control in place can position businesses to drive more predictable and profitable growth.