Skills for Finance Professionals in a New Digital Age
Rapid advancement in technologies gradually changing our way of doing our daily works. For finance professional, this means a big deal as you may find yourself irrelevant soon if there are no steps taken to up skill yourself.
The emergence of various tools utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning have made the work for finance professionals to be much easier compared to those of 10–20 years ago. This progress has been gradually shifting the role of finance professionals from its traditional number-crunching role to a more of value-added role by force. In most organization, finance professionals are expected to work more closely with top management by giving insights to the numbers presented to them.
This progress has been gradually shifting the role of finance professionals from its traditional number-crunching role to a more of value-added role by force.
To stay relevant in this new age, finance professionals should equip themselves with various technology skills on top of its traditional must-have skills. Reflecting my journey as a Finance and Transformation personnel, I list down herewith some key skills that I think valuable for finance professionals:
Data extraction and analysis
Advanced MS Excel — Without a doubt basic MS Excel is no longer sufficient to survive in our existing day-to-day task. As data becomes richer and more complex, advanced Excel such as macro, VBA and ability to use various complex formulas are necessary to not only execute difficult task but also saving your precious time in dealing with raw data.
Python — In many universities, Python is the first programming language for STEM-related course. Some finance professionals may find this programming language as alien as we were more relying to MS Excel to crunch and manipulate our data since the very beginning. However, at a more advanced stage of data analysis, finance professionals may find themselves walking into data science territory where simple algebra is no longer enough to analyze the data. At this new age, finance professionals are expected to be able to utilize statistical methods such as regression and clustering techniques.
Further, advanced forecasting and visualization using trained data through scikit-learn and matplotlib is much more easier to be done using python.
Check out my previous project using python to identify locations to open a café in Kuala Lumpur here.
- Python official web page here.
SQL — In most organization, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) collects and process a huge amount of data in daily basis. The data then is stored in database either on-premise or cloud. Thus, the skill to extract the data will save up your time rather than waiting for your IT guy to get information that you were not requested for. To extract this data, a common language is required to ensure you get what you’re asking for. One of the most common database language is Structured Query Language or “SQL” as Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) commonly utilizing relational database and SQL is commonly associated with it. The cool part of SQL is that it introduced the concept of accessing many records with one single command. Further, it eliminates the need to specify how to reach a record, e.g. with or without an index [1]. Most of the modern ERP systems such SAP and Oracle utilize relational database at the back-end and highly compatible with SQL.
Data presentation, visualization and analytics
MS PowerBI / Tableau — As a Finance Professional who works closely with top management, you will realize that all your dazzling detailed working is no longer useful. You need to find ways on how to present this data in a simpler but interactive way. Plus, you may have data from various sources that may able to assist your management team to come out with a better decision. Thus, the skill to utilize business intelligent tools such as Power BI or Tableau will assist you to combine all unrelated data into coherent, visually immersive and interactive insights.
- MS Power BI official web page here.
Data sharing and dissemination
MS Sharepoint — Now, you have produce a a lot of analysis for your superior but all of your workings are scattered around. It’s good to have all the workings in your personal cloud storage. But it is much more better if they are at the place with collaborative features are enabled and easy access by your team. One option is to use MS Sharepoint to centralized all the documents belonged to your department and team. Just create a team site in sharepoint and voilà!, you and your team can start sharing the documents internally (or externally). By having a centralized data room it will make easier for you and your team to access, forward, retrieve and manage internal documents. It will also make a handover task much easier when any of your team members leave the organization.
- MS Sharepoint main web page here.
MS Power Automate (optional) — MS Power Automate came as part of Microsoft 365 bundle. Previously, it was called MS Workflow reflecting its intended usage — automation. Assuming you have a controlled excel table in MS Sharepoint where any addition or deletion of line item requires approval from your superior. And you know the progress is fluid - means coming back and forth to get approval from your superior is inevitable and sorry to say — ‘ a pain in the ass’ as your superior may be busy and you may not be able to catch him every time. So, how about automate this process — let your team propose any changes in the table and these changes will automatically go to your superior for approval. Once approved, the propose changes will automatically reflected in the excel table but will not if otherwise. Yes, Power Automate can do this and this is only a tip of iceberg!
MS Power Automate main web page here.
App Development tools (optional) i.e MS PowerApps, Flutter and Dart — At advanced stage, you may find that dissemination of information throughout your organization especially to your management team may require a dedicated platform and the existing ones may not be able to cater all your needs- this is when your requirement list starting to grow. So, how about roll-out your sleeves, fire your laptop and start coding the apps on your own. I would suggest MS PowerApps for a low-code environment and Flutter with Dart language for a more advanced user. MS PowerApps is bundled with Microsoft 365 subscription and Flutter is an open source UI SDK by Google — so both options may require a very minimal to zero monetary investments, all you need is the time spent to learn how to use these amazing tools.Why coding on your own? obviously, it is much cheaper then outsourcing to programmers and you have more control to the outcome of your application. Depends on individual, I found it is much more satisfaction to code it out on my own.
- Check out a simple app that I wrote using Flutter in Google Playstore here.
- MS PowerApps official web page here
- Flutter official web page here.
Other things to consider — getting Data Science certificate on top of your professional qualification.
Based on EY Asean Finance Executive Forum 2022 sharing on 20th January 2022, top technology investment priorities for finance functions in the next three years are:
- Advance Finance Data Analytics
- Automation in all processes
- Digital Skills
- Data Visualization
Further, they have also noted that the critical technology investment priority for finance leaders over the next three years is likely to be “advanced and predictive analytics”.
So you heard from this the word “analytics” is repeated again and again. To be precise, analytics is the process of discovering, interpreting, and communicating significant patterns in data [2]. The analysis of patterns especially can be much more meaningful whenever the appropriate statistical method is deployed into the model and the user is able to comprehend the output from the model deployed. That’s why skills and knowledge of data science becomes important than ever for finance professionals. For example, financial models require input based on historical data to project the future event/movement. The accuracy of forward looking movement will be enhanced with the injection of some statistical elements into the model.
There are many data science courses/ certification out there that you could take. But there are 2 top certifications that I would always recommend my connections to pursue:
Both are affordable online courses and easily followed by beginners. However, the clear distinction between these courses is the programming language utilized in approaching data science topics. For example, IBM utilizes Python-based programming language while Google certificate utilizes R programming language. Personally, I would prefer Python as it is the best language if you would like to go deeper into machine learning and artificial intelligence realm.
However, both language are powerful and it is up to your personal preference. Study the differences and match up with what you would like to extract out of the courses then choose the path consistently. I have completed IBM’s certification and it took me more than 100 hours from the beginning until the last capstone project. The skills that I received from this certification compliment my existing skills and qualifications.
Conclusion
The world evolves, so does the skill required for finance professional. The emphasize on digital and advanced analytics skill in finance have become important than ever throughout the industries. It is up to us to whether to stay relevant in a long run or be complacent and obsolete in this digital age.
