“Companies that invest in transformation now can gain a competitive advantage and thrive during these challenging times,” says Remco Koopman, co-founder and managing partner at Bluefield, as he talks about his personal experience with finance and digital transformations.
Can you tell us more about your personal experience with finance and digital transformations?
I have been working in finance for over 25 years and during that time I have seen a lot of changes. When I started, financial processes were still very labour-intensive and a lot of paper documents were used. Over the years I have witnessed the rise of digitalisation and seen how it has transformed the financial world. I have worked for various companies in different sectors and have seen how important it is for a company to be able to adapt quickly to changing circumstances.
Why should companies invest in transformation now?
Businesses that can swiftly adjust to changing circumstances have a clear advantage. Investing in finance and digital transformation makes you future-proof because it makes your organisation more agile and efficient. When done properly, it creates excellent steering information, allowing you to keep your eyes on the ball.
What is the goal of a finance transformation?
The finance transformation creates excellent management information so you can easily steer the organisation towards achieving the objectives. It is a shift within the finance team from a focus on registration and looking back to forecasting and anticipating.
The finance transformation aims to create maximum added value from finance by improving performance in the areas of accounting, control, and reporting. The automation and digitisation of financial processes does not only save time and costs, it also improves the reliability and speed of management information. This allows management to quickly and adequately respond to changing circumstances and make better decisions.
What is important in a digital transformation?
Maximum support and optimal flexibility from your systems is absolutely necessary. If this is not the case, and your systems lag behind developments, your growth will be hindered.
However, systems are never an end in themselves. In a digital transformation, it is important to put the users of the systems at the centre. The processes, employees, and objectives must be optimally facilitated by the systems.
It is not just about implementing a new system and adding data, but mainly about the change side of processes and people. That is why we have a business first approach with limited influence from IT in these projects.
Do finance and digital transformations often occur simultaneously?
The different parts of an organisation do not exist in isolation. A development in one part has impact on the other parts. The trick is to align processes, data, systems, reports, and people perfectly. By emphasizing the interdependence between the transformations, the best results are achieved.
Investing in a transformation now has a positive impact on your competitive position. It does not only make the organisation more efficient but also more agile, and it improves the focus on the objectives. Curious? Send Remco a message on LinkedIn!