How finance teams can support the sustainable business
According to Thomas Zipperle, CFO for SAP Southeast Asia, “sustainability: it’s a buzzword that we hear all the time. Everyone knows the term in context of the environment and ecology, and in the context of running a business with a long-range view.”
As more businesses move toward intelligent finance, the question now is how finance departments in the digital age can figure out how to have a relevant finance function. With automated accounting and real- time access to all financial data, why do businesses even need finance people?
The answer is that businesses will always need the human perspective and the insight of a strategic CFO to help the company both thrive and stay aligned to its broader purpose.
“As a CFO, I look forward to the evolution of the finance department as it becomes better positioned to support the organization. This evolution means that instead of disappearing, finance will increasingly become embedded in business, and employees that were finance people in a finance organization will become finance people in a business organization.”
The finance view is essential for applying checks and balances within the organization, which will be even more important in the future because of the accelerating pace of change. This requires important decisions to be made faster, supported by the historical and predictive insights that finance can provide. For this to happen, the right technology must be in place to offer a single source of truth to build trust and ensure compliance, which is the foundation of a sustainable business. In this way, SAP itself serves as an example. I often find that companies want to hear from us, in a peer-to-peer conversation, how SAP leverages its own technology in its finance organization – for example, implementing shared service centers to streamline processes and reduce costs. South East Asia is experiencing rapid growth, and, as a result, every day we see the challenges that customers and governments must face as this puts additional strains on the environment and natural resources. With the overarching goal to help the world run better, SAP often assists companies in achieving both sustainable business and environmental practices.