In a digital era where software is eating the world, the vast majority of public companies are struggling to stay current when it comes to deploying new technologies in their tax and finance departments. It’s true that one of the primary duties of the chief financial officer is to de-risk the enterprise, but at what cost when they are losing competitive advantage due to slow adoption of new technology? We recently attended the Financial Executives International (FEI) CFRI Conference in NYC where a couple of themes dominated conversations across the board. Corporate finance leaders need to bring new technology into their organizations now or be left behind. And these professionals should be supported by both the audit committees and boards to whom they ultimately report.
Let’s call out the technologies mentioned during the conference: robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning, AI, blockchain. Some of these technologies are being deployed today at various levels with varying levels of success. Of all these technologies I personally believe blockchain is by far the best suited for applications in the tax & finance world. Think about it: blockchain is an immutable ledger that provides complete trust in the transactions within the system. Financials are built on ledgers. Don’t we all want complete trust in financial reporting? Sure, you can layer in pieces of automation to enhance workflow and machine learning until we have open data. But blockchain is the silver bullet – this technology is a real game-changer and the future of financial & regulatory technology. If you don’t believe me, just ask the CEO of IBM.