Parameters for CFOs

The last years have brought a lot of change for CFOs. As of July 2002 the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was introduced by the American Government - this not only has an influence on American but also on globally active companies. Now a stronger focus is on reporting in companies. The major goals for the CEOs have changed to more profit oriented growth and innovation.

Some major trends in establishing this can be observed. First of all there has to be stability in the core business processes, so that finance reporting and financial control mechanisms and regulations are met and managed well, that data structures are consistent and that the integration of data is an important component to construct and set up future oriented tools for future prognosis and planning data.

The biggest challenges lie in the future oriented and future directed view of data. As in the past analysis tools just looked at data backwards in time, this new approach - of looking ahead is the new major focus.

It is very important in order to to achieve this to get an overall access and overview of KPIs and process control data over the whole enterprise.

To step forward in this direction there a lot of already existant tools available such as business process management (BPM), forecasting and budgeting tools.

Five simple factors are considered to be in highest demand:

* simple structures -
enterprises and companies that manage and control complexity best are also the best perfoming ones

* focus on growth -
here it is necessary that the financial sector of companies works closely together with other parts of these companies to analyse customer structures and to understand customer request better and find the best suited reaction and service for these.

* understand the core company performance -
have the monitoring and measurement of KPIs installed, functional and ready and the ability to manage these KPIs in tighly coupled timeframes and open the ecosystems for thriving decision making, governance and management.

* risk management -
establish processes and procedures that run more efficiently than before

* simplifying -
to simplify and standardise processes, etablish and integrate standardised data transfers and communication and to improve the focus on future oriented planning and management.