The fundamental nature of activities performed to achieve business outcomes

The portfolio of skills, jobs, and talent pools tapped to perform the work

The environment and policies that increase collaboration, productivity, and consistency of the talent experience

While professionals often perceive automation as a mirage due to foundational issues, the accelerated transformation of finance has created a digital environment where automation can become a reality for organizations that exploit digital technology’s emergence to implement new foundational systems.

While technology has influenced how people conduct business, financial personnel continue to face manually intensive processes. In a recent survey from the Deloitte and Institute of Management Accountants (IMA®) report, From mirage to reality: Bringing finance into focus in a digital world, 75% of respondents said their company’s accounting processes are largely manual or still a considerable manual effort.

The rapid transformation into digital finance, both during COVID-19 and into the next normal, creates the opportunity to make automation a reality this year. How? Consider creating a comprehensive digital finance strategy, prioritizing a resilient and consistent data infrastructure. Beyond infrastructure, go beyond automation to enhance and align technology and human capabilities, both of which may be utilized with automation, enabling a realignment around a finance capability spectrum that elevates business decisions.

The workforce has been evolving, but last year accelerated changes to the makeup of the workforce at warp speed. This year, and well into the near future, expect an increasingly diverse workforce that is more dynamic and highly empowered. Take advantage of the evolving workforce and enable professionals to succeed.

Empower workers with resilience to adapt and evolve with transformation. Make the empowerment of workers to adapt and grow for an ever-changing future the foundation of workforce strategy. Other foundations of workforce strategies for a workforce of the future include career development; internal mobility; well-being; and making diversity, equity, and inclusion a priority.

Train for skills, but nurture human capabilities. Skills are tactical knowledge or expertise needed to achieve work outcomes within a specific context. Human capabilities are observable attributes that humans demonstrate independent of context.

The year ahead will see an adapted workplace for Controllership, with many recent changes becoming permanent as organizations continue to maintain them or adopt some aspects of the changed workplace model. Some specific areas to expect changes that should continue, either fully or partially, include:

Highly distributed workplaces using digital technologies that create effective digital meeting environments when physical environments may not be unavailable. According to a recent global survey of more than 7,000 professionals, 20% or respondents noted improved collaboration thanks to digital technologies1. Leveraging technologies in the workplace should continue to offer professionals more opportunities for growth, as they enable more connection and bypass any unplanned obstacles to the physical environment that may emerge in the future.

Hybrid workplace models for professionals that adopt varying percentages of time allotted to working from home, remote work environments, and working in a more traditional office are likely permanent. Even in a postvaccine world, the workplace will be fundamentally different.