Efficiency ≠ Effectiveness
Although one might be hard-pressed to find an inefficient finance team, many finance leaders can find themselves unwittingly in the precarious position of conflating efficiency with effectiveness. The truly effective finance team not only orchestrates the organization's financial inputs exceptionally well—it also takes an inspired approach to process, technology and people.
Here are a few ways to think about achieving true finance agility.
1. Shared Services, Shared Goals
Your Bermuda dream house should not be built on sand. In order to master strategic agility, you must master the repeatable and transactional business-as-usual finance activities. Sharing efficiencies only frees your teams up for more strategic thinking.
2. Slaying the Technology Monster
The agile finance team thinks beyond the depreciation rates and sunk costs behind its organizations' technology stack. Top-performing finance organizations adopt productivity-enhancing technology at twice the rate of typical companies, according to The Hackett Group.
3. People Possibilities
Agile team members—forward-thinking, highly skilled and process-oriented—are the final frontier to achieving agility. The business acumen of accountants and finance staff is incredibly valuable, but the employee who also loves data, operates with flexibility and has an entrepreneurial drive will help move the needle in a strong way.