For the past few years, implementing new accounting standards has meant a long “to-do” list and a lot of hard work for the Chief Accounting Officer. But even as the responsibility for compliance continues, the CAO’s inbox keeps getting fuller. At many companies, other C-suite leaders are increasingly relying on CAOs to contribute to business transformation and strategy.
In a new KPMG report, CAO rising: How the chief accounting officer role is evolving, we discuss the challenges CAOs face, including during the current COVID-19 outbreak, and how this spells a golden opportunity for them to partner with top leadership and help transform the company. Based on our work with CAO clients as well as insights from a survey of 229 CAOs and their functional equivalents, we look at the changing role of the CAO and also some significant capability gaps they must overcome to thrive in a rapidly shifting business landscape.
How CAOs see their evolving responsibilities
Evolution of the CAO - the way forward
Governance and compliance
While the current crisis requires CAOs to focus even more diligently on compliance matters, they need to find ways – via automation and process transformation – to allocate resources toward strategic activities.
- Assess current processes and benchmark against industry peers
- Identify gaps with industry best practice
- Identify processes that can be automated
- Develop a business case for transformation
- Build a transformation blueprint with a realistic time line
- Deliver early wins while ensuring proper controls are in place
M&A transactions
Now more than ever, CAOs need to be included earlier in deals to ensure success and even initiate investment ideas by leveraging data and analytics.
- Start to collaborate with the deal team during pre-diligence
- Offer insights on finance and accounting impacts
- Identify finance and accounting synergies
- Support diligence with advanced analytics to identify value and risk
- Manage day 1 risk
Transformation
Leading the transformation of your own function is one thing, but being able to take on a leadership role in the transformation of the entire company can elevate CAOs to the next level.
- Determine the questions the business struggles with most
- Establish the vision and goals for transformation; be bold, but realistic
- Prioritize areas of focus —articulate value and business case for change
- Align with leadership team—break down silos, in and out of finance
- Create an agile mechanism for program funding and resource allocation
- Define the strategic roadmap and an executable plan
Business partners
Understanding the operations of other business units is a must, but CAOs need to effectively market their role as business partner by providing key insights.
- Define CAO role in enterprise strategy
- Solicit “voice of the customer” input
- Identify technology and data solutions to increase speed and effectiveness of insights
- Articulate expectations for effective partnering; make it real for every partner
- Manage talent to close gaps in skills, competencies and behaviors
- Establish mechanism to measure influence, impact, and performance
