4 Ways Digital Transformation Will Change The Role Of The

CFO

Aprilsaw the rst SAP CFO Executive forum session in Melbourne, hosted by SAP in conjunction with The
Australian Financial Review. With an overwhelming response from the CFO and nance leadership
community, it truly brought to life the power of peer-to-peer engagement, especially in these evolving times.
I was lucky enough to sit on a panel alongside ve peers from across the industry:Race Strauss, Group CFO,
Jetstar;Jo Hands, CFO, Sensis;Andrew Grifths, CFO, Deloitte Australia;Siobhan Hammer, CFO, ALH
Group; and Anna Lee, CFO, The Iconic. It was an excellent discussion, whichfor me personally provided
unique insight into the perceptions and views of the CFO in light of how technology is shifting our mandate.
Id like to share my top four takeaways from the session:
1. Technology and digital transformation isimportant across the board, and for the CFOs agenda.
All of my peers referenced how technology and digital disruption are very important to the board of their
companies. At SAP, we have grown by listening to our customers and embracing the evolution to the cloud
through both acquisitions of best-of-breed market leaders and designingour ownnew products. Had we not
embraced this change, we could havebecome a Kodak. The Iconic, for example, makesit easy and affordable
for customers to buy the latest fashions and other products online and have them delivered to a very strict and
consistent service level. Jetstar has changed the way Australians and other customers y overseas by making
it more affordable and easier to book travel via online and mobile platforms.
2. Traditional nance expectations are no more.
As nance professionals, we cannot rest on our laurels with outdated static reporting. Finance is now at the
forefront of guiding the business, and ourexecutives and business partners expect much more. They assume
we have thetechnical ability toadd real value by providing real-time predictive analysis to make fact-based
decisions quickly.
We have historically played a steward role centered on compliance and transactions, but now is the time to
collaborate and transform our business with growth strategies into new markets. At SAP, we call thisbeing a
transformation agent, and we have developed a methodology for training our employees. All of my peers were
talking about the change and training we mustprovide to enableour employeesto keep up with
companyexpectations.
3. People who embrace technology are key to enabling change.

CFOs, and the C-suite in general, are increasingly becoming responsible for the IT function within their
organizations. Those who are able to embrace technology and spend more time understanding and
collaborating with the business will be true transformation agents who are sought after for key roles. The types
of roles that exist today will not be around in the future, and nance teams need to grasp this speed of change
and demonstrate the value they can give using their nance skills and training around interpretation.
4. Insight is key real-time data is nances best friend.
In order to stay relevant to business, CFOs must embrace real-time data.This willenable teams to spend
timeamong the business, assisting with fast interpretation and fact-based decisions rather than sitting in front
of a screen compiling numbers. Technology is enablingspeed, a single source of truth, predictive analysis, and
self-service, and the nance teams who embrace this will be a true partner to the business.
CFOs are responsible forleading transformation within the nance function, and it is clear that wider teams are
coming on board. Itis critical to serve as an enabler rather thana negative disruptor. Itwill be interesting to
see over the coming years where this puts us in the minds of the business as a strategic contributor. I am
already seeingand I am condent that we will continue to seethat nance will be integral to decisionmaking,working even closer with wider teams in the business.
I am really looking forward to the next CFO executive engagement. If you are interested in joining the CFO
executive community, sign uptoday. I look forward to connecting with you in the next engagement!
To learn more about how nance executives can empower themselves with the right tools and play a vital role
in business innovation and value chain, please visit sap.com/nance for additional research and valuable
insights and join us at SAPPHIRE NOW.
SAPPHIRE NOW (#SAPPHIRENOW) and the ASUG Annual Conference (#ASUG2016) will run concurrently
from May 17 to May 19 in Orlando. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak will speak on May 17, two days before
Coldplay plays Concert Night.

About Gina McNamara

Gina McNamara is the CFO for SAP Australia and New Zealand, leading a team of approximately 40 staff
across core nance, legal and contracts, facilities, purchasing, and information technology. She has been with
SAP since May 2007. Before taking on the CFO position, Gina worked in Commercial Finance Business
Support for SAP Australia and New Zealand, where she supported sales and consulting teams with revenue
recognition and deal support. Gina is a strong advocate for demonstrating how SAP runs SAP and technology
to improve operations for the ofce of the CFO, particularly around moving from an on-premise environment to
the cloud.
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As a sourcing or procurement manager, you may think theres nothing new about supplier collaboration. Your
chief procurement ofcer (CPO) most likely disagrees.
Forward-thinking CPOs acknowledge the benet of supplier partnerships. They not only value collaboration,
but require a revolution in how their buying organization conducts its business and operations. Procurement
must start looking to suppliers for inspiration and new capability, stop prescribing specications and start

tapping into the expertise of suppliers, writes David Rae in Procurement Leaders. The CEO expects it of your
CPO, and your CPO expects it of you. For sourcing managers, this can be a lot of pressure.
Here are nine things your CPO wants you to know about how supplier collaboration is changing and why it
matters to your companys future and your own future.

1. The need for supplier collaboration in procurement is greater than ever

Over half (65%) of procurement practitioners say procurement at their company is becoming more
collaborative with suppliers, according to The Future of Procurement, Making Collaboration Pay Off, by Oxford
Economics. Why? Because the pace of business has increased exponentially, and businesses must be able to
respond to new market demands with agility and innovation. In this climate, buyers are relying on suppliers
more than ever before. And buyers arent collaborating with suppliers merely as providers of materials and
goods, but as strategic partners that can help create products that are competitive differentiators.
Supplier collaboration itself isnt new. Whats new is that its taken on a much greater urgency and importance.

2. Youre probably not realizing the full collective power of your supplier relationships
Supplier collaboration has always been a function of maintaining a delicate balance between demand and
supply. For the most part, the primary focus of the supplier relationship is ensuring the right materials are
available at the right time and location. However, sourcing managers with a narrow focus on delivery are
missing out on one of the greatest advantages of forging collaborative supplier partnerships: an opportunity to
drive synergies that are otherwise perceived as impossible within the connes of the business. The gamechanger is when you drive those synergies with thousands, not hundreds of suppliers. Look at the Apple Store
as a prime example of collaboration en masse. Without the apps, the iPhone is just another ordinary phone!

3. Collaboration comes in more than one avor

Suppliers dont just collaborate with you to provide a critical component or service. They also work with your
engineers to help ensure costs are optimized from the buyers perspective as well as the suppliers side. They
may even take over the provisioning of an entire end-to-end solution. Or co-design with your R&D team
through joint research and development. These forms of collaboration arent new, but they are becoming more
common and more critical. And they are becoming more impactful, because once you start extending any of
these collaboration models to more and more suppliers, your capabilities as a business increase by orders of
magnitude. If one good supplier can enable your company to build its brand, expand its reach, and establish its
position as a market leader imagine whats possible when you work collaboratively with hundreds or
thousands of suppliers.

4. Keeping product sustainability top of mind pays off

Facing increasing demand for sustainable products and production, companies are relying on suppliers to
answer this new market requirement.
As a sourcing manager, you may need to go outside your comfort zone to think about new, innovative ways to
collaborate for achieving sustainability. Recently, I heard from an acquaintance who is a CPO of a leading
services company. His organization is currently collaborating with one of the largest suppliers in the world to
adhere to regulatory mandates and consumer demand for lean and green lightbulbs. Although this approach

was interesting to me, what really struck me was his observation on how this co-innovation with the supplier is
spawning cost and resource optimization and the delivery of competitive products. As reported by Andrew
Winston in The Harvard Business Review, Target and Walmart partnered to launch the Personal Care
Sustainability Summit last year. So even competitors are collaborating with each other and with their suppliers
in the name of sustainability.

5. Co-marketing is a win-win
Look at your list of suppliers. Does anyone have a brand that is bigger than your companys? Believe it or not,
almost all of us do. So why not seize the opportunity to raise your and your suppliers brand prole in the
marketplace?
Take Intel, for example. The laptop youre working on right now may very well have an Intel inside sticker on
it. Thats co-marketing at work. Consistently ranked as one of the worlds top 100 most valuable brands by
Millward Brown Optimor, this largest supplier of microprocessors is world-renowned for its technology and
innovation. For many companies that buy supplies from Intel, the decision to co-market is a strategic approach
to convey that the product is reliable and provides real value for their computing needs.

6. Suppliers get to choose their customers, too

Increased competition for high-performing suppliers is changing the way procurement operates, say 58% of
procurement executives in the Oxford Economics study. Buyers have a responsibility to the supplier and to
their CEO to be a customer of choice. When the economy is going well, you might be able to dictate the
suppliers goods and services and sometimes even the service delivery model. When times get tough (and
they can very quickly), suppliers will typically reevaluate your organizations needs to see whether they can
continue service in a scally responsible manner. To secure suppliers attention in favorable and challenging
economic conditions, your organization should establish collaborative and mutually productive partnerships
with them.

7. Suppliers can help simplify operations

Cost optimization will always be one of your performance metrics; however, that is only one small part of the
entire puzzle. What will help your organization get noticed is leveraging the supplier relationship to innovate
new and better ways of managing the product line and operating the business while balancing risk and cost
optimization. Ask yourself: Which functions are no longer needed? Can they be outsourced to a supplier that
can perform them better? What can be automated?

8. Suppliers have a better grasp of your sourcing categories than you do

Understand your category like never before so that your organization can realize the full potential of its supplier
investments while delivering products that are consistent and of high quality. How? By leveraging the wisdom
of your suppliers. To be blunt: they know more than you do. Tap into that knowledge to gain a solid
understanding of the product, market category, suppliers capabilities, and shifting dynamics in the industry, If a
buyer does not understand these areas deeply, no amount of collaboration will empower a supplier to help
your company innovate as well as optimize costs and resources.

9. Remember that theres something in it for you as well

All of us want to do strategic, impactful work. Sourcing managers with aspirations of becoming CPOs should
move beyond writing contracts and pushing PO requests by building strategic procurement skill sets. For
example, a working knowledge in analytics allows you to choose suppliers that can shape the market and help
a product succeed and can catch the eye of the senior leadership team.
Sundar Kamak is global vice president of solutions marketing at Ariba, an SAP company. For more on
supplier collaboration, read Making Collaboration Pay Off, part of a series on the Future of Procurement, by
Oxford Economics.

About Sundar Kamak

Sundar Kamak is the Vice President of Products & Innovation at SAP Ariba. He is an accomplished Solutions
Marketing and Product Management Execuive with 15 + year's broad experience in product strategy,
positioning, SaaS, Freemium offering, go-to-market planning and execution.
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The role of the CFO is undergoing a serious transformation, and CFOs can expect their role to continue to
evolve, according to a recent CFO.com article by Deloitte COO and CFO Frank Friedman.
In the futurist article, Friedman says one of the biggest factors that will contribute to the CFOs signicant
change over the next ve years is technology.
Digital technology is obviously expected to drive change in high-tech companies, but Friedman says its
industries outside of the tech sectors that are of particular interest, as they struggle to understand how to grasp
and harness the digital capabilities available to them.

Working with high tech in low-tech industries

Five years from now, a nance team may be dened by how well it uses technology and innovative business
tools, regardless of what industry its in. The article outlines some examples of ways that digital technology will
increasingly be used by CFOs in non-tech sectors:
Predictive analytics: CFOs in manufacturing companies can forecast results and produce revenue
predictions based on customer-experience proles and current demand, instead of comparing to previous
years as most companies still do today.

Social media and crowdsourcing: You may not think CFOs spend a lot of time on social media or
crowdsourcing sites, but these methods can actually expedite nance processes, such as month-end
responsibilities of the nance organization.
Big Data: CFOs already have a lot of data at their ngertips, but in 2020 they will have even more. CFOs in
both tech and non-tech sectors who understand how to use that data to make valuable, informed decisions,
can strategically guide their company and industry in a more digitally oriented world.
To do this, Friedman says CFOs can lead the way by addressing some critical areas:
1. Know the issues: Gather the key questions that leaders expect Big Data analytics to answer.
1. Make data easily accessible: Collect data that is manageable and easy to access.
1. Broaden skills:The nance team needs people with the skills to understand and strategically interpret the
data available to them.

The tech-savvy CFO

The role of todays CFO has already expanded to include strategic corporate growth advice as well as
managing the bottom line. In 2020, Friedman says expectations placed on the CFO are presumed to be even
greater, and CFOs will likely need a much more diverse, multidisciplinary skill set to meet those demands.
The article details several traits and skills that CFOs will need in order to keep up with the pace of digital
change in their role.
1. Digital knowledge: CFOs must be tech-savvy in order to capitalize on technical innovations that will benet
their company and their industry as a whole.
1. Data-driven execution: CFOs will need the ability to execute company strategy and operations decisions
based on data-driven insights.
1. Regulatory compliance: Regulations continue to be more stringent globally, so CFOs will need to be
procient at working closely with regulators and compliance systems.
1. Risk management: With the growing global economy comes increased cyber and geopolitical risks
worldwide. The CFOs of 2020, especially those in large multinational organizations, will need to have the
expertise to monitor and manage risk in areas that may be unforeseen today.

The future CFOs well-rounded resume

By 2020, the CFO role will require much more than just an accounting background. According to Deloittes
Frank Friedman, CFOs may need to bring a much more multidisciplinary skill set to the job as well as broader
career experiences, from working overseas to holding positions in sales and marketing, and even running a
business unit.
So if youre a current or aspiring CFO, you have ve years to round out your resume with the necessary skills
to be ready for the digitally driven role of the CFO in 2020.

The above information is based on the CFO.com article What Will the CFO Role Look Like In 2020? by
Deloitte COO & CFO, Frank Friedman Copyright 2015 CFO.com.
Want to learn more about best practices for transforming your nance organization?View the
SAP/Deloitte Webinar, Reshaping the Finance Function.For anin-depth look at digital technologys role in
business transformation, download the SAP eBook,The Digital Economy: Reinventing the Business World.To
learn more about the business and technology factors driving digital disruption, download the SAP
eBook,Digital Disruption: How Digital Technology is Transforming Our World.To read more CFO insights from
a tech industry perspective, read the Wall Street Journal article with SAP CFO Luka Mucic: Driving Insight with
In-memory Technology.
During a heavily industrialized era, the skills employers wanted mostly involved obedience, increased
performance, and, well, pretty much the opposite of what a good employee is appreciated for today. Its clear
the world is continuing to change and, along with it, so are jobs and the criteria that determine the ideal
candidate. What will the world look like in the future and what sort of employee it will demand?

Sense-making
In an era that relies increasingly on technological developments, productivity might increase, but its bound to
take humanity down with it. Essentially dened as the ability to determine the deeper meaning behind
something given, sense-making is a necessary skill if we are to keep the shades of gray that dene us.
Moreover, it also refers to the ability to connect dots and to create something out of the given plan. Given how
we are all slowly but steadily getting replaced by machines, in the future, there will be fewer people to aid with
the creative part of business.

Cross-cultural competency
Globalization is a growing reality and seclusion is becoming a foreign concept for us all. Whether were talking
about multi-national structures or interpersonal systems that make it easier for cultural mixing, its clear we
need to adapt to the times.
Its already becoming clear that people who speak multiple languages are more likely to occupy an important
position. Moreover, plenty of companies are now going global, extending all over the world. As a result, their
ideal employees need to be able to adapt to different cultures.

Cognitive load management

Dont you hate when you are presented with a ton of tasks and you dont know where to start? If thats the
case, its probably because you lack cognitive load management. Its no secret we live in an era where we are
bombarded by information.
The difference in functionality is how we adapt to it, how we lter it, and how we manage to correctly prioritize
it. Possess this skill and you may also nd it a lot easier to lter through job applications and understand which
one is most suitable.

Novel and adaptive thinking

We are fortunate enough to be able to say we are starting to be looked at less like robots and more like human
beings with functional ideas and creativity. This is shown in the growing trends of companies that are starting
to encourage self-initiative and nding nonconventional routes for problem solving.
In the end, its all about pushing ourselves beyond our limits and out of our comfort zone. Employers look less
in the direction of people who wholly abide by conventions and more toward people with the ability to bring
innovations and solutions no one else would have thought of.

Social intelligence
Last but not least, the era of globalization also heavily encourages teamwork. Possessing social skills is going
to become a crucial asset, whether were talking about interactions with customers, employers or employees.
Social intelligence refers to the capacity to understand that others dont share the same goals and motivations
as we do and the key to all is asking the right questions and getting their own goals to align with our own.
These will be the keys to being the ideal employee in a few decades. Are you ready for the future?