Agility, Resilience and Partnership: The Role of Finance in Organizational Future Readiness

Disruption is nothing new, but the pace at which finance leaders must reevaluate and change course is increasing dramatically, and therefore changing budgeting and forecasting processes forever. Traditional approaches that rely on interpretation and extrapolation of past performance are not appropriate for an environment rife with disruption, complexity and uncertainty. Instead, building an infrastructure for future-ready performance requires brief looks at history, current state insight, and frequent and continuous evaluations of possibilities in the future. Planning is situational and continuous, versus being calendar-driven only. Finance is sitting at the epicenter of this dramatic shift, given the line of sight and business partnership with leaders across the business.

In this session, we will discuss these topics and how it is driving finance leaders to focus on:

• Applying predictive and intelligent forecasting methodologies for insight and alerts when there are anomalies, trends, and deviations
• Leveraging internal and external data for improvement in forecasting accuracy
• Shortening forecasting time horizons and performing more frequent updates
• Exploring and optimizing divergent scenarios for informed decision-making
• Developing systems of dynamic planning
• Providing systems of insight and anticipating possible situations and potential outcomes