Experts canvass intelligent finance operations in Nigeria

Finance professionals must evolve alongside the finance function, acquire the right skills and embrace the dynamics of technology in order to remain relevant in a rapidly changing economic landscape.
These, according to a statement, were the views expressed by speakers at the second edition of the CGMA Speaks Series, organised by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) recently in Lagos under the theme “Future of Finance.”
Moderated by Noel Tagoe, executive vice president, Academics, Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA), speakers at the event also emphasised the need for finance professionals to understand and translate data into insight for right decision making by chief executive officers.
In his remarks, Dotun Sulaiman, executive chairman, Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, who was the chairman of the event, said certain forces of change from the global economy would alter finance functions, including demography, urbanisation, scarcity of resources and technology.
He, however, stated that as a broad response to the changing role of finance, “it would be important for finance to take a keen interest in technology innovation and keep abreast of the developments and for finance executives to strive for a level of familiarity with technology innovations,” warning that “organisations that are blindsided by these technology innovations will lose out.”
Delivering a keynote address, the national senior partner, KPMG Nigeria, Kunle Elebute, who was represented by the head, Risk Consulting, KPMG Nigeria, Olumide Olayinka, said organisations must operate intelligent finance functions. He also added that Chief Financial Officers should utilise business intelligence tools such as the enterprise resource planning software and decision support tools to mitigate future financial risk.
“Essentially, your finance function has to be intelligent. In fact, finance is not separate from risk because people try to put them into different buckets, but finance functions are the same as risk. This is because the things that will have financial implications are multifaceted.
So, the finance function of tomorrow has to be extremely intelligent. It must have business intelligence tools, both financial and non-financial, and all of these have impact on the future of finance,” he said.
Noting that the finance function of the future would be “significantly changed” by the use of technological innovations such as bloc-chains, cloud tech, robotics and big data analysis, Elebute stated that finance function should be reviewed and standardised, and that finance professionals must have the right skills to ensure proper implementation of finance tasks.
Also speaking, managing director, Chapel Hill Denham Management, Onouju Irukwu, said finance professionals must operate beyond numbers by turning the data available into insights in order to earn the respect of their superiors and clients. She also said accountants must evolve and change their orientation from being a pure accountant to a business oriented accountant.
According to Irukwu, “None of us can survive in this business if we don’t have information, can’t analyse our data with that information and make the right decisions that will take us forward.
Finance has got to be a business partner. Finance professionals must understand the business perspective. Everyone should understand that sanitising the data you get and then interpreting it accurately is important so that the CEO can rely on it.”
The head of finance, SAP West Africa, Gbemisola Adelowore, emphasised the need for finance professionals to work with data specialists in order to know where and how to acquire the relevant information.
“Before you work with the data, I think it is important that finance professionals actually work with the number crunchers in directing them on where to get the data and what kind of data to get because you know, garbage in is garbage out. If you don’t have the right data or right source of information, then the output will not be helpful at all”, she said.
Speaking on the future role of values in finance, Head of Treasury, Shell Nigeria, Lolomari George, stated that while corporate governance and project delivery are the tangibles presently, the future is undefined because of regulatory delays in moving with the current trends.
Lolomari said, “The current thinking around values is on trust, integrity and corporate governance. Corporate governance is one element that would feed into the value of tangibles. Another element is project delivery; the fact that the market trusts you to deliver. The reality is there. How you capture it, how you account for it, the whole thing is still developing because the regulation is going to have to catch up with the current realities.”
In her submission, managing director, FMDQ OTC, Bola Onadele, who was represented by the Associate Vice President, Market Development and Regulation, FMDQ OTC, Jumoke Olaniyan, noted that despite the massive shift brought by technology, leading to the breaking down of barriers and accessibility to the global market, the finance function still needs the human touch to interpret the big data available.
CGMA Speaks is a thought leadership parley which brings notable business leaders together for broad reaching conversations, about the context of today’s business environment in Nigeria and across the world.