Whether you’re a CFO or a financial controller, you know how much time and effort you and your team spend deep in concentration to get your monthly accounting figures to balance. Your accounts payable and accounts receivable work doesn’t get much attention unless things go wrong, but all the time you need to stay on top of your tasks to keep things running smoothly.

Accounting has traditionally been a backwards looking profession.  Let me be clear that I did not just call accountants backwards people, but in general their mandate has been to document, audit and verify what has already happened.

Some of the forces helping make these changes a reality are enterprise-wide integration of advanced analytics, unifying financial information in a single-source-of-truth, movement toward continuous-close processes and the rise of Machine Learning.

Today’s CFO is bombarded with buzzwords and talk about the latest and greatest trends in corporate finance. The typical finance professional is usually occupied with more practical considerations. Buzzwords aren’t high on the agenda when some new regulatory control is fighting for your attention or you’re busy keeping an eye on the bottom line.

Still, those buzzwords and trends persist. It’s little wonder that finance pros are confused by it all.

Here are a few such terms you might have heard of:

1. Predictive accounting – using accounting to predict revenue.
2. Machine learning in finance and accounting.
3. Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

It’s natural to ask whether any of this matters. Is it worth devoting mental bandwidth to these new trends?

This post is a summary of why I think these trends may be relevant to you, and how getting onboard now can help you add long-term value to your organization.

Are you struggling with implementing big-picture compliance solutions on a limited budget?

Did time and cost constraints force you to adopt RevRec compliance with short-cuts, spreadsheets or brute force manual calculations - leaving you with a dead-end "solution"?

Do you face similar no-win trade-offs with regard to new Lease Accounting changes coming in January 2019?

You're not alone.  Lots of small to midsize companies are grappling with difficult compliance issues.

This eBook provides a brief overview how S/4HANA represents the future for companies currently using SAP platforms, as well as many other companies looking for a sustainable path to finance innovation.  It also lays out some of the key considerations in developing a roadmap to implement and get the best results from S/4HANA.

As companies grapple with accelerating changes across most global markets, they face critical challenges for staying ahead of competitors, sustaining growth, maximizing profitability, complying with regulatory requirements and establishing organizational agility to respond quickly to the unexpected.

By 2020, corporate finance professionals are going to have some pretty big challenges on their hands. Compliance requirements are changing, and the inherent limitations of existing legacy finance and ERP systems are going to be at threat.

Over recent years, companies throughout the world are experiencing a series of major changes in regulatory and compliance mandates that are disrupting existing accounting and business processes. 

If you think of today’s businesses as being like complex organisms, then it becomes easier to understand the critical role of advanced analytics in monitoring organizational health and supporting growth. Just as your body’s nervous system, immune responses and circulatory network provide continuous sensory feedback to identify problems and maintain healthy functioning, your company’s analytics processes are critical for organizational adaptation and survival.