Why Your Leadership Team Needs a Chief Digital Finance Officer
Why Your Leadership Team Needs a Chief Digital Finance Officer
A digital Chief Finance Officer leads their company to thrive in the digital world, driving data within the organisation from its financial perspective. Innovative is at the heart of the success of every organisation, and a Chief Digital Finance Officer will help drive your company into the future. While we’re all familiar with the concept of a Chief Finance Officer, a Chief Digital Finance Officer is a relatively new role.
If you’ve been watching F500 companies closely, you may have noticed that this role is starting to appear within leadership teams. We’re looking at the role of Chief Digital Finance Officer and what they can offer to your organisation.
What is a Chief Digital Finance Officer?
A Chief Digital Officer oversees data within the organisation from its financial perspective. It’s one of the latest c-suite roles to appear out of the digital and data-driven age of the workplace.
Their role revolves around overseeing progress within the company and implementing policies with a focus on the data and digital. Such tasks can include overseeing a transition to a paperless office model, investing in software and systems to facilitate efficient online working.
It’s not just practical tasks that a Chief Digital Officer will oversee. Part of their work revolves around deep-diving into corporate data to gain relevant insights into the progress and future development of the company.
Why should you have a Chief Digital Finance Officer?
Your organisation can add a Digital CFO to the leadership team to oversee the planning, management, implementation, and enhancement of digital finance solutions. They can improve the effectiveness of the digital and financial side of your company, particularly where they overlap.
Depending on your company’s situation, a Chief Digital Finance Officer can help to develop and secure digital payment solutions, leveraging them to create a more efficient back-end to your business. They can also help simplify and boost the effectiveness of payments relating to the operational costs of your organisation.
Adding a Chief Digital Finance Officer as a c-suite position within your leadership team can help articulate and develop your digital finance plan. This individual will support the strategic development of your organisation.
The need for a Chief Digital Finance Officer comes as the scope of work for a traditional CFO expands into digital strategy and its execution. The pandemic has shown the need for digital strategy to sit within the financial scope, including overseeing the technological direction of the organisation.
Accenture’s recent report, ‘CFO Now: Breakthrough Speed for Breakout Value’ finds that digitalization, consumer expectations and market dynamics have led to a change in the role of CFOs. This transformation has occurred while CFOs are still working on their traditional portfolio of work. In the future, we expect these responsibilities to be given within the scope of a Chief Digital Finance Officer.
For example, a Chief Digital Finance Officer will also look at the security challenges that face the digital infrastructure of the organisation’s financial setup. Accenture’s report found that 72% of CFOs have the final say on the technology direction of their organisation. Not every CFO necessarily has the tools and experience (and the time) to oversee this responsibility.
It’s one example of a major responsibility that could be handed over to a Chief Digital Finance Officer, and that is crucial to the efficiency and success of the organisation.
Accenture’s report also found that only 28% of finance professionals are engaging with risk management regarding data security in a meaningful way.
With cyber security threats growing every day, this is a crucial element that is not given the attention it needs. With a Chief Digital Finance Officer in place, they can oversee the implementation of policy regarding data security in a meaningful way.
Embracing the role of Chief Digital Finance Officer
For years, Chief Finance Officers were viewed as being “economic guardians”. In the same way, the role of Chief Digital Finance Officer will develop to become your organisation’s “digital steward”. They’ll be overseeing the collection and analysing of data relating to the business’ key decisions to develop strategies that improve the efficiency of the business.
Your Chief Digital Finance Officer will sit alongside your CFO as part of your c-suite leadership team. They’ll help spearhead the future strategy around operating models and drive technological change, focusing on security and data development.
Embracing the role of Chief Digital Finance Officer doesn’t mean turning your away from traditional CFOs. Instead, these two positions will co-exist in unison with each other.
What to look for in a Chief Digital Finance Officer
A Chief Digital Finance Officer can be a gamechanger to your organisation’s strategic planning. You want to find a professional with several years of experience in finance, budgeting, and project management. Ideally, they’re have experiencing in implementing digital finance solutions within your industry and region.
They’ll have a track record of producing results and a proven ability to identify and solve problems while overseeing a busy department. Your ideal Chief Digital Finance Officer will be familiar with working with internal and external stakeholders within an organisation similar to your own.
Your Chief Digital Finance Officer will work in partnership with your CFO and CEO to oversee the development and implementation of an overall policy to improve the organisation’s efficiency.
Our team will work with you to find the Chief Digital Finance Officer that is right for your business and organisation’s needs. Our portfolio of CDFOs has a wealth of experience working with companies across a wide spectrum and delivering proven results.
At FD Capital, we help our clients find part-time, portfolio, interim and full-time FDs that add value to your business. As the world changes, we’re committed to meeting the challenges of the next generation of business. We’ll work with you to add a Chief Digital Finance Director to your leadership team. We also offer Technology Finance Directors with a background in both Accountancy and E-Commerce.
You can get in touch by calling us today at 020 3287 9501 or getting in touch via our contact form.
Adrian Lawrence FCA with over 25 years of experience as a finance leader and a Chartered Accountant, BSc graduate from Queen Mary College, University of London.
I help my clients achieve their growth and success goals by delivering value and results in areas such as Financial Modelling, Finance Raising, M&A, Due Diligence, cash flow management, and reporting. I am passionate about supporting SMEs and entrepreneurs with reliable and professional Chief Financial Officer or Finance Director services.
