Enabling and streamlining digital Transformation across different service industries has always been one of Microsoft’s strongest commitments. Today, the giant tech company hosted a roundtable in collaboration with Harvard Business Review with an aim of educating Chief Financial Officers and Chief Operations Officers on how best to use advanced technologies within their organizations.
This event was one in a series of others organized with Harvard Business Review in the country to provide insights into enhancing corporate performance through the use of Technology, and the use of data to inform and set up the organizations’ strategic technology roadmaps.
Geoffrey Mathare, Finance Lead for Enterprise Business for Microsoft North, West, East & Southern Africa, Levant & Pakistan countries noted that organisations must be acutely aware of the ‘uncomfortable’ shift in roles that has presented itself in the face of digital change. “The role of today’s CFOs and finance executives must take into consideration a much broader scope – requiring a heightened technological sophistication. The emergence of the digital age is fundamentally changing the priorities and roles of today’s finance executives, and security forms an integral part of this.”
“However, like with all industries that exist today, challenges are inevitable and constantly present ‘bottlenecks’ for full potential output. The same can be said for the financial sector, where there are inadequate tools for anticipating expanding business complexities, processes are prone to error, threats, risks and ever-increasing regulation. All of these are major cause for concern,” continues Mathare.
There’s a whole array of technologies that finance executives can incorporate in their work in order to remain competitive and continue to grow. Such are the likes of cloud, artificial intelligence and robotics which provide a mechanism to significantly reduce costs and errors while improving the quality and speed of internal processes. Similarly, machine learning is a critical tool for predicting outcomes and managing risk. Organisations can use this technology and solutions like Microsofts Cortana Intelligence Suite across the organisation to stay ahead of the curb internally.
By choosing to adopt innovative technologies, CFO’s and COO’s alike will strengthen organisational leadership, cultivating company growth through more efficient and productive allocation of resources, leading to stronger compliance. Microsoft is fully committed to accompanying them on this journey.