Throughout the epidemic, companies have faced several challenges and hardships. However, one advantage has been that it has given leaders time to rethink both business and operation models. They also learned from past experiences and sought new ideas, skills, and technologies to support their growth.

While it is simple to say, "When we get through this, we'll do things differently," putting that into reality is more challenging. Finance executives aren't always aiming to enhance an already optimal system; instead, they need to repair—or, in some circumstances, entirely rework—a broken one.

Four Tips to Prepare for the New Now

  • Automate, automate, automate. Crisis scenarios that required teams to operate remotely revealed several processes that finance might (and should) have automated earlier. Transaction processing, compliance, controls, and reporting are all part of this. By automating these tasks, staff may devote more time to planning and analytics to assist decision-making processes.
  • Digitization = resiliency. Digitizing to virtual operations, similar to automation, is part of what ensured company continuity during the epidemic. Many firms that were not previously digitalized accelerated their digitization to enable remote labor. This shift will only help teams implement their reopening plans and offer more support for ongoing remote work.
  • Rethink leverage. Leverage is a type of risk that CFOs strive to reduce by changing borrowing arrangements when the world returns to "normal." This entails looking for ways to earn more cash, such as shortening payment cycles by monitoring payment conditions inside accounting and reporting tools.
  • There may be no "normal" anymore. While almost everyone has wanted things to return to "normal" or speculated what the "new normal" would look like, the truth is that this crisis has exposed the reality that possibly nothing was or will ever be "normal." Instead, agility, attentiveness, and the capacity to adjust quickly become characteristics of successful firms, from present survival to future thriving.

The challenges of this year have compelled firms to reconsider old operating and commercial strategies completely. It will be a challenging but essential shift for finance. Businesses will be better positioned to foresee the future while delivering today, establishing the required competencies to succeed, with the inclusion or optimization of accounting and reporting software solutions.