In today’s business environment, the role of finance professionals is supreme. The status and performance of giant corporations depend solely on the strategic and commercial skills of their finance professionals.
In the changing world of business, a new generation of employees has been transforming the working mechanism. They are driving inspiration from the emerging trends which are enabling them to run the highest-value activities.
Another aspect which has been driving young minds to aim for the higher is the introduction of globalization. But globalization is not only accompanied by a ton of innovative opportunities but also a few risks.
Therefore, the role of the finance managers is not only to devise strategies to assure digital business transformation but also to tackle these risks. And in order to manage the risk and challenges which is associated with their job profile, many finance professionals are leveraging new technology to survive in the new environment.
Over the past few years, the responsibilities of finance leaders have undergone a shocking metamorphosis, from encompassing new business strategy to develop operations for an effective IT risk management. But it seems that the responsibilities are going to change soon owing to the latest trends which came up recently.
1.The rage of Big Data
When big data made its way into the field of data science, everything associated with it went into an absolute tizzy. All thanks to the boom of big data because without it data science, business intelligence, and analytics could not have penetrated in almost every area. With that, the way of storing and handling data has been redefined up to an extent.
Now the finance industry faces a dire need of finance professionals who are not only adept in managing financial issues but are also comfortable with the use of business analytics. It is also being said that these years would serve as the golden period to business analytics professionals as they would be showered with job opportunities.
In a nutshell, the financial industry is all set to undergo a huge change as now the data of consumers and their transactions can easily be managed and then utilized to reach heights.
Let us keep our hopes high as this sea wave of change would certainly bring a rise in demand for business analytics professionals to ensure a smooth operation of the finance industry.
2. Welcoming the startups
Anyone who has not been living under a rock since the past few years have witnessed how an overwhelming number of startups had made its way.
It is because of these startups amounting in thousands that the government has also announced financial assistance to stabilize the companies which are still in the nascent stage. Many investors have lined up to sponsor projects owning potential and without the intervention of the financial industry, fruitful outcomes cannot be expected.
As startups are still on its rise, increased demand for financial modeling professionals has been noticed. To analyze and represent the financial viability of the startups’ projects, the finance professionals would have to go out of their way to chalk out the financial models.
3. Fitting into the digital-first ecosystem
With all the demands for skilled financial services and employees skyrocketing, it is not a secret that the financial industry needs to fulfill the requirement. Finance professionals now have to compete for attention across the consumers’ hours of screen time.
When most consumers these days keep themselves engrossed with customized solutions, and improving the omnichannel experience, finance professionals also have to imitate the same moves.
To continue the consumer-hyping activity, finance professionals have to try their hand on a ton of specialized but crucial tasks. From micro interactions in the user experience to analyzing customer data for the intention of sending personalized credit offers, professionals need to regulate all these processes. According to statistics, about 33 percent of business owners get done with professional relationships just because they fell that the financial services lacked personalization! So finance professionals should take this as an example and mix a bit of creativity and personalization even in automated financial services.
4. The brand new blockchain technology
This technology which was earlier created for other industries has penetrated in the finance sector and speculations suggest, it has become an imperative aspect for the finance professionals. As technology is remodeling, the hackers are getting more sophisticated in designing strategies to invade in consumer’s privacy. Thus in order to rebuild their brand reputation and regain the trust of the customers,’ the blockchain technology has been made the essential part of most successful finance companies.
But, this technology although being used is still not harnessed up to its complete potential. Thus it is expected that the finance leaders of today would find innovative uses of this blockchain technology so that no loopholes remain in the system allowing unobstructed entry to the fraudsters.
5. The rise of robots
Thanks to the designing of robots or more precisely the Robotic process automation, because now employees can redirect their attention towards value-added work. The RPA works by implementing software robots or bots to mimic certain human activity, which is monotonous in nature. Now, this step is ensured to motivate the finance professionals to brainstorm innovative ideas which will update the operating of the finance organizations, instead of wasting their work hours in chores which can be done even by an intelligent machine.
Now the main concern lies in the fact that how will the introduction of robots in the financial industry impact data analytics, and also how the organizations would serve the needs of their customers.
6. AI-infused finance
A few years ago, manually running correlations in spreadsheets used to be termed as advanced analytics, but are things the same even today? Finance has come a long way from that, and today it does not only predict the forecast. Now the advanced machine learning technology has enabled the computational code to make predictions by analyzing the data and then make predictions based on it. Tools to improve the accuracy of the forecasts are now easily available thus offering the chance to the curious minds of the finance leaders to explore the wonderful world of AI.
Even in the current world of Finance where IT has made its way into every aspect, financial analysts who aren’t even tech-savvy have the power to trigger actions with complete ease.
Now, this leads to the scenario where IT applies the technology and simultaneously finance develops and fulfills its needs. Artificial intelligence excels at producing a better productive scenario in a ton of areas which humans might find challenging. From understanding demand curves to social sentiment, artificial technology is an all-in-one technology which can generate accurate predictions.
So now that AI is finally here, gone are the days when finance analysts had to kill their work hours in making triple exponential smoothing spreadsheet models. Now the world of automated algorithms will provide the users with prescriptive analysis thus offering them the opportunity to go out in the search of innovative techniques which will improve the finance sector.
7. Visual finance
Ask anyone and you would find how much they love stories which come with pictures. Although the financial data was represented with the help of pie and bar charts, it seems to have gone backdated. According to users, the charts and graphs were just manually created from rows and columns and used to lack the life which will appeal the users. Now just with the help of a single click user can find the much sophisticated geospatial and multidimensional representations that would explain the users with more words and graphics thereby making them comprehend the facts easily.
While social anthropologists are of the opinion that our attention spans are reducing, there remains no doubt that these visualizations improve communications and help the audience garner discover and explore insights which were otherwise difficult to obtain from complex data relationships.
Now consumers no longer have to think hard to obtain answers for their business questions. They can just filter and drill into the data available before them and all their doubts would be cleared instantly.
8. The much changing role of CFO
All the chief financial officers should pay heed as their work profiles would go through some major changes. Today the roles of CFO have become more elevated as the world looks up to the power of their most senior financial leader.
While the roles of CFO have undergone various transformations, the most highlighted one among them is the emergence of CFO as the IT leader. Although the CFO would not be able to build a website using codes they have proved to be a natural fit to oversee the technology eventually establishing them as an integral part of the management of technology.
Conclusion
These were some of the latest trends which are sure to shake the finance industry to its core. If you are a finance professional make sure to grasp these trends so that you can get easily adapted to the technological reforms taking place in the finance industry.
