The retail industry has gone through decades worth of changes since the start of the global pandemic, and retail CFOs are moving fast to ensure their companies are adapting and thriving. Experts from KPMG and Workday talk about this and more on the Workday Podcast.
Audio also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Sometimes disruption is the mother of innovation, and that’s increasingly the case in the retail world. Through the difficult times brought on by the global pandemic, some retailers are finding ways to thrive through new technology and operating models. And increasingly, CFOs are at the center of it all.
In this episode of the Workday Podcast, I’m joined by Shehtaaz Zaman, director at KPMG, and Ben Pierce, vice president of sales for financials, planning, and analytics at Workday, to talk about how retail CFOs are finding their way to innovation in times of disruption. You can also download the Workday/KPMG joint paper, “Retail Finance Transformation: Leaning into the Digital Future,” that we discuss in the episode.
Here are a few highlights of our conversation. Be sure to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, so you don’t miss an episode. You can find our other podcasts here.
“The CFOs I work with are asking themselves: ‘Am I making sense of the data that's available to my people? What else is actually driving our business now? How are we making sure we have the right information that can help us navigate these next few years?’” — Shehtaaz Zaman
“As I’ve talked to CFOs, two themes have come up: new ways of working with and finding customers, and vertical integration. And, a lot of CFOs are looking to develop new partnerships to better control their cost model as business ramps up and down.” — Ben Pierce
“You’re seeing the advent of more machine learning, analytics, and intelligent forecasting, which makes the forecasting process more dynamic, so you can inform the way the business is moving. This is the key value proposition that finance can offer to the enterprise, if they're able to tap into it effectively.” — Shehtaaz Zaman
Interested in learning more? Check out this recent report: Harvard Business Review Analytic Services: Finance’s Key Role in Building the Data-Driven Enterprise.
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