The Chief Financial Officer has always been a position of respect in the business world. A financial expert with insight to manage the complete monetary dealings of a business, this position has evolved with technology and time to become a go-to person for strategic business decisions.
No longer the accounting “book keepers”, modern CFOs understand, in depth, the market opportunity, strategy and business model of the organisation and provide a unique perspective that looks across all departments. They are increasingly expected to have a clear view of the big picture and limited bias toward one aspect of its performance. To play this advisory role well, the individual is a business executive first and a financial executive second.
CFOs who have exposure to both the finance and accounting sides of the business, as well as being advocates for technology modernisation and strong leadership experience across a range of businesses, are best prepared for the strategic needs of a business.
While embracing the opportunities enabled by modern technology and process automation, CFOs still have to demonstrate discipline, attention to detail, with the right level of risk management, compliance and control to clearly demonstrate capability to auditors and regulators. Able to provide the wider organisation with access to and visibility of data, information, insights and the means to put them into action. The modern CFO understands how to build scalable systems and processes; to develop KPIs, helping performance trends to be understood, and developing and implementing strategies to improve them.
Searchlight directly addresses the concerns of the Office of the CFO providing consulting, advisory and delivery
services that focus on:
- Cloud-ERP and Finance technology modernisation
- Business efficient regulatory compliance
- Process optimisation and automation
- Working capital and indirect procurement optimisation
- Extracting more value from existing IT investments
Our services improve business performance and productivity; help reduce costs and increase profitability; deliver competitive advantages and improve routes to market.
Through engaging Searchlight, tomorrow’s CFOs become better educated consumers of technology, able to push the envelope, demanding creative solutions that improve their businesses and empower employees. They are “dangerous enough to know what to ask for and educated enough to know what is possible and what is right to expect”.