Heffernan Partner, EY with Frank OKeefe, Partner EY, David Jeffreys, MD Actionpoint and Mike Goode, Director- Nothern Trust
Finance departments must embrace technology and the skills to help strategise in increasingly uncertain world
Limerick Chamber EY ‘Future of Finance Function’ events gives insights into how finance functions are evolving
Finance departments must constantly embrace technology innovations to help their businesses drive efficiencies and strategise in an increasingly uncertain world, a Limerick Chamber Business Breakfast ‘Future of Finance Function’ Sponsored by EY heard.
Attended by finance team representatives from SMEs to multi-national companies based in the midwest, the event also told that finance teams need to have not just the right tools but also need to be updating their skillsets to ensure they can meet the challenges and opportunities of the world they operate in. This event was part of Limerick Chamber’s newly introduced programme entitled ‘SME Strands’ for small to medium enterprises, which are the largest Limerick Chamber membership demographic.
According to Limerick Chamber CEO James Ring, the EY event clearly illustrated the evolving role of finance departments, which are as much now about looking ahead to the next year than they are about reporting on finances of the previous one. “We were really fortunate to have a company of the global standing of EY on board to give us this fascinating insight, which left us in no doubt but technology is playing an increasingly greater role in how finance functions operate. Traditional finance tasks are now becoming automated and the role of finance people is evolving. The finance function itself is now also very much a data-driven decision centre and CFOs are decision makers in adoption of technology right across the business.
“The cloud, analytics, artificial intelligence and many more technology advances are impacting on and creating opportunities for finance departments. These advances can help companies save costs, manage risks and increase insight. One of the key things we heard from EY is that finance leaders need to be willing to experiment and take these new technologies on board. If they don’t move with them, they will not be achieving the efficiencies that they can for their business and be at a disadvantage.”
The Breakfast also emphasised, the Chamber CEO said, the need for companies to invest in skillsets, whether upskilling existing staff or recruiting them. “The combination of the right people and the right tools will enable finance functions to play a more central role in the overall strategy of an organisation. In the volatile economic world we live in, there are so many forces that business are vulnerable to. You think of things like pressure on natural resources, cyber security and climate change, for example.
“These and many more influences outside our control can impact on business and the EY event illustrated how essential it is for finance functions to process and get insights from large amounts of data so that they can have the best insights for what’s ahead. If they don’t do this, they will be a lot more vulnerable to these forces than they should be. We very much got from this event that, for business and especially those operating internationally, the future is all about having real-time data and generating insights so they can respond to and strategise for changes.”
Said Frank O’Keeffe, Partner and Head of Assurance, EY Ireland said: ““Our Future of Finance events have been a huge success and we were delighted to be able to come to Limerick as part of the series – a city which we have recently expanded in and which boasts a thriving business community.
“The purpose of this event was to bring together some of the greatest minds within finance teams in the region – not only to share knowledge on best practice, but also to look ahead to the future and see how the function can grow and adapt in the face of significant change in the form of new innovations and technologies. We are delighted that the turnout for the Limerick event was so strong and we look forward to building on this momentum in the coming year.”
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