Finance transformation
Amcor staff were provided with device systems to collaborate digitally while working remotely.
Michael Casamento, CFO at Amcor.
$53.3tn
The estimated contribution to global GDP of digitally transformed businesses by 2023.
International Data Corporation report (2020)
38
This was particularly valuable during the most challenging days of the pandemic. Amcor staff were provided with multiple device systems to collaborate digitally while working remotely. Digital benefits extend to operations too, with the company becoming increasingly flexible with its supply chains, automating tasks and driving new competences. “A great example of this is our use of real-time sensors to support automation and reduce waste, as is our use of augmented management, which helps us make the right decisions more quickly on supply chain or customer issues,” Casamento explains. As well as the positive impact reducing waste has on the environment, he adds these technologies are also helping to manage energy use more effectively too. The benefits of financial digitisation do not stop at the office door or factory gate – customers see the value in Amcor’s digital evolution too. “Our customers need more integration, so we are constantly looking to provide them with new digital channels and smarter analytics,” Casamento says. “We’re providing faster quotes and producing different packaging from multiple locations thanks to technological innovation, but there is so more to do.” Overall, Casamento believes digitalisation provides an opportunity for customers to be increasingly integrated with Amcor, with the company aiming to solidify this “tight connect” whether it be for product development, communications or customer service. “By continually investing in this technology,” he says, “we’re looking to stay ahead of the curve”.
Times are changing
Beyond improving the state of their respective businesses, meanwhile, both Casamento and Pitchford
agree that these rapid digital advances have also changed their own roles. Pitchford speaks for them both when he says that though he has always seen the CFO role as involved right across his business, in partnership with the CEO and COO, what has changed is the increasing power of data – which has become central to good strategy and operational execution. That’s true, he emphasises, across financial data – but also “enterprise data, in real time, and that’s an arena finance can play a central role in organising”. For Casamento, meanwhile, CFOs have become true business partners for growth, who he suggests understand business processes and can support present operations and help define future ones. “Today’s CFO is incredibly closely aligned to business operations and involved in driving value creation,” he says. “It’s become a much more forward-looking role and also a more social one. Connection with people across the organisation is absolutely critical in helping to link strategy with performance.”
Casamento also touches on another benefit of digitisation: the ability to free up time that would previously have been spent on manual financial administration, creating space for what he calls “more strategic and forward-looking” business- creation work. “The times are changing,” he says, “and Amcor is changing with them.” It’s a view likely shared across finance departments the world over. Even for those businesses too small to need a boardroom, digitisation and automation will inevitably become critical to their success, as products and services become ever more entwined with day-to- day operational functions. Whatever else you may think of him, Jeff Bezos is clearly onto something. ●
Finance Director Europe /
www.ns-businesshub.com
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