Developing Finance Skills in a Digital World

We are living in one of the most exciting and challenging times of history. Technology, fuelled by data, enabling the re-imagination of business models in a world where societal, environmental and geo-political issues are increasingly prevalent.

Finance has always been externally focussed. This perspective enables us to better manage risk, deploy expertise, shape strategy and drive superior and competitive performance.    

What will it take for finance to deliver in a changing world? Talent, skills and capabilities will be critical. That doesn’t just mean the talent we recruit and develop but starts with looking at ourselves. It is no longer possible to just aggregate all the skills and experience of the past to lead finance in the future. 

Skills for the future

I believe that in the years to come, finance professionals will increasingly need to develop their capabilities in three key areas, underpinned by strong foundations of control, risk and performance management:

• Tech Savviness: It’s vital to understand the building blocks, including how technology integrates, the latest developments, trends and areas of convergence. Make the connections between business challenges, technological solutions and application. An increased depth of awareness will help not only avoid the expensive white elephant investments, it also helps shaping resource allocation, promoting a stronger return on investment and unlocking new possibilities.
• Data Science: Finance professionals are unlikely to be data scientists – but they do have a role in articulating the business question for data scientists to answer and then interpreting the outcome to drive action from insightful analytics. This role has the potential to deliver huge value in areas such as forecasting, where we’ll be able to move from providing basic explanations to faster and deeper insights enabling great responsiveness. Equally, developments in AI have the potential to enable a more holistic approach to risk management – moving from sampling to full data sets and exception management. 
• Systemic Thinking: Harnessing the pressures of the external world requires a strong ability to make connections, see opportunities and create new business models. This is at the heart of systemic thinking, which enables finance professionals to find new sweet spots, align resources with the opportunity and create the right set of KPIs to ultimately access new sources of value. 

Learning Journey for the future

If these are the key skills we’ll need in the future, what is the learning journey that enables us to develop them? Inspired by my own recent experience, coupled with that of many of my peers, it’s clear the best practice approaches to development have evolved dramatically in recent years to become more immersive, connected and experiential. 

• Get back to the classroom. But not in the way you or I learnt as a graduate. The on-line opportunities to learn are vast. Excited by the potential but also frustrated by the hype and jargon around data science, I put myself through a data science course last year. After some initial pain as I grappled with the math, I can now distinguish between ‘deep learning’ and ‘machine learning’ and can converse using my analytics to help add value. So alongside my Strava targets for the body this year, I’m setting some on-line learning goals for my mind.
• Get out of the office. Social networking groups like meetup.com (100’s of tech groups in London alone), conferences, on-line demos mean you can engage directly to more rapidly join the dots, develop personally and help solve your own business challenges. Which leads to learning through…   
• Experimentation and implementation. It’s important to get your hands dirty with technology and analytics. Equally, being involved with a start-up either directly or through mentoring helps appreciate new business models. Nothing beats having a go with a real-life use case to develop skills.  

This year I’ll be seeking out new learning opportunities – not as an add on to my day job, but to promote inspiration and impact. I’d love to hear your own learning journey and views on skills for finance in a digital world.