It is important to understand the digital maturity of your function before you build a digital strategy and roadmap. Always focus on long-term goals instead of short-term goals.
To understand the digital maturity of your finance function, you can assess several key areas, including:
- Automation: The extent to which finance processes are automated using digital technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI).
- Data Management: The quality, accuracy, and accessibility of the data used by the finance function, as well as the use of data analytics to drive decision-making.
- Digital Infrastructure: The technology infrastructure in place to support the finance function, including the use of cloud-based systems, mobile technologies, and digital platforms for financial reporting and analysis.
- Digital Interactions: The extent to which the finance function interacts with internal and external stakeholders through digital channels such as web portals, mobile apps, chat, and digital communication tools.
- Talent and Skills: The digital skills and capabilities of the finance team and the availability of training and development opportunities to enhance those skills.
- Digital strategy: The existence of a digital strategy for finance, its alignment with the overall business strategy, and its regular review and update to keep up with the changing business needs.
Once you have assessed each of these areas, you can identify areas of strength and areas that need improvement, and develop a plan to enhance the digital maturity of the finance function.
Take these actions after the digital maturity assessment
- Document all the processes, discover and list down the automation opportunities and improvement of each process.
- Map the dependencies with other areas if you will automate these processes.
- Interact with stakeholders and external vendors to get the feasibility and cost to eradicate these dependencies.
- Now you have the list of processes that need to be automated along with their cost dependencies, and timeline.
- Make a priority list and allocate a budget for this automation.
