Traditionally, CFOs have focused much of their attention on financial reporting, which means that they have been looking in the rear-view mirror. A financial report summarises performance over a previous period, or, as with the balance sheet, summarises the state of the business at the end of a period.
For today’s CFO, of course, financial reporting is still critical. But technology makes it possible for the finance organisation to get near real-time information about the company’s performance, and even to gather data on leading indicators—those that show how the company will perform in the future.
A variety of business intelligence and analytical tools can help the CFO slice and dice this information, and even perform predictive analytics through new machine learning technologies