How to maximize impact as a finance professional while navigating through big changes

IMA 2024 Europe Annual Conference - Amsterdam

The future of the finance profession is always changing, and the profession’s impact is increasing. This requires adaptation from financials, but also rebranding to showcase this impact to the new generation.

Therefore, the yearly IMA Accounting & Finance European Conference was themed ‘Inspire Tomorrow’. This edition addressed the changing impact of the profession with keynotes and panel talks by industry leaders. Speakers included, amongst others, Nancy Rademaker (International Keynote Speaker) about the digitalization of customer behavior and Anders Liu Lindberg (Co-founder Business Partnering Institute) about creating value as a finance business partner. With changes in digitalization, sustainability regulation and by new generations entering the workforce, how can you elevate your daily impact? A people-first approach is essential.

Digitalize with a customer first perspective

Companies lack a strategy for handling digitalization and emerging technologies, such as AI, meaning we need to start developing strategies for the next normal.

These strategies should have a customer first approach. Something that Nancy Rademaker called ‘high touch’ instead of ‘high tech’. Starting from customers and their experience, means that you consider their needs and preferences instead of only your own perspective. Here, it’s important to remember that perfectionism kills opportunity. Maria del Dado Alonso Sanchez, CFO Berlin Brands Group, raised the ‘let-go mentality’ to get to decisions and change faster. Making decisions with 80% confirmed truths and 20% uncertainty helps with speeding up, and from there you can adapt based on learnings. One example is Booking.com, that wanted to implement more payment methods without knowing what the customer would accept and with a long list of requirements. The latter means more bottlenecks. By turning the way of thinking around to asking ‘what is the minimum requirement to start?’, Booking.com was able to implement solutions quickly to see what the customer actually used and optimize from there.

To be able to do find the confirmed truths for this mentality, collecting data is essential. Finance is at the crossroads of all the important data that is moving around in the company. Here, AI can be a helpful tool to support you. But, as Rademaker mentioned, the business and ethical context can only be provided from human experience. Thus, it’s not man vs machine, but man with machine.

It seems like the finance profession has a lot to learn, but also to unlearn. The lesson here is to take more risks and dare to make mistakes in order to create change, for example with pushing sustainability at a strategic company level.

Involve the boardroom with ESG storytelling

Even though ESG should be the responsibility of the whole organization, it starts in the boardroom with an ESG strategy. At least according to Brigitte de Graaff, Assistant Professor and CMA Program Director at VU Amsterdam. To create the strategy, the boardroom needs to understand the organization’s data and the economic efficiency ESG creates. Something right up the finance professional’s alley. Legislation such as the CSRD and the CSDDD are ways to nudge companies to take ESG action going beyond just compliance. This allows finance professionals to play an essential role in creating and implementing ESG strategies.

However, it’s not always easy to convey your business case. Soufyan Hamid, Corporate Training Facilitator at The Finance Circle, reasons that people are not interested in only the data or information. They want the insights that are behind that data that are used to make actionable decisions. The ‘three whats method’ provides a solution to use storytelling in your presentations to your advantage. Start with the ‘what’ to describe your observations. Then move on to the ‘so what’ to identify the implications for your audience. Lastly the ‘now what’ defines your recommendations, your course of action. This can not only help sell content, but also the profession itself, contributing to retention.

Rebrand the profession with a human-first approach

Although the impact of the finance profession is increasing, the Talent Retention report by IMA shows that (young) finance professionals are strongly considering leaving the profession. As high turnover rates are not new, Anders Liu Lindberg proposed rebranding the finance sector into three categories for career development. First of all, technical accounting for new standards and regulations that need to be implemented. For example, ESG regulations and new technologies. Secondly, data scientists and analytics. Financials need to understand the generated data and to communicate it well with others by using storytelling techniques. Lastly, business finance. Finance professionals take on a business consultant role and discuss with leaderships what the actions are that need to be taken based on the numbers. Therefore, the focus on human capability development such as relationship building, communicating advice and interpretations, and people skills are more important than ever. Not only in attracting new talent, but also to harness good knowledge transfer from the existing to the new generation of financials.

In conclusion, a new mindset for the new generation of accountants and new content to work with show that the future of the finance profession is more human than ever. Accepting failure is part of that, and a way to learn. Finance professionals are surely an essential part of organizations and will play a very interesting role with all these changes. It’s exciting to shape the future together.