Business Analytics for the CFOs Function (Completed)

This presentation focuses on how the finance function can leverage analytics, especially predictive ones, embedded in their financial reporting, planning, and decision making. Finance and accounting professional are typically considered to be very quantitative. They are by nature number-crunchers. But collecting, validating, and reporting data is not the same thing as analyzing the information that can be gleaned from data. Most organizations are drowning in data, but starving for information. The presentation will also describe the impact that the analytics of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) will have on the accounting profession. The CFO function is experiencing a shift from beyond financial reporting to dealing with and reporting non-financial information. Finance people are increasingly involved with creating and monitoring performance measurements. But do they know how to identify the appropriate measures? Their task should not be about what can be measured but what should be measured. And don’t stop there. This is not about just monitoring the dials of a scorecard or dashboard, but moving the dials. The decisions involved to improve performance require analytics of all flavors. Most companies are far from where they want and need to be when it comes to implementing analytics and are still relying on gut feeling, rather than hard data, when making decisions. Volatility and complexity are the new normal.

Who Should Attend
CFOs, Financial officers and controllers, Managerial and cost accountants, Financial and business analysts, Budget managers, Strategic planners, Marketing and sales managers, Supply chain analysts Risk managers, CIO and information technology staff, and Board of Directors.

Topics Covered

• How the finance function can leverage analytics
• Financial reporting, planning, and decision making
• Identify the appropriate measures
• Decisions involved to improve performance require analytics of all flavors
• Balanced scorecards, strategy maps, driver-based budgets and rolling financial forecasts
• Measuring and managing channel and customer profitability, using activity-based costing principles
• Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA)

Learning Objectives

• Recognize why business analytics and leveraging Big Data provide a competitive advantage
• Differentiate between business intelligence (BI) and business analytics
• Recognize how to imbed statistics and analytics into enterprise performance management (EPM) methods
• Differentiate forecasting from predictive modeling
• Identify alternative approaches to accelerating the adoption rate of business analytics
• Understand the impact of AI on the accounting profession

Level
Overview

Instructional Method
Group: Internet-based

NASBA Field of Study
Finance (2 hours)

Program Prerequisites
None

Advance Preparation
None