Our world is in the midst of a transformative technological revolution that is impacting every nation, industry, enterprise and human being on this planet. It is a revolution because it is radical and happening so fast. It is transformative because it is so pervasive and fundamentally changing the way we live.
We’re seeing changes in business and technology never before imagined. For example:
- Ten years ago, the Internet of Things (IoT) consisted of approximately 500 million connected devices. Today that number is 9 billion. At the end of this decade that number is projected to be 50 billion. And, not long after that? One trillion.
- Self-driving cars are no longer a dream. They’re real and very close to becoming the standard. Did you ever consider Google a car company? It is projected that the soon-to-arrive proliferation of self-driving cars will increase the capacity of our roads and highways by a factor of 10-15 times. Imagine the impact on safety, quality of life… even real estate prices.
- Crowdfunding means that institutional investors are no longer needed to fund startups. In fact, you can now validate new products without even creating them yet.
- The largest hotel company in the world—Airbnb—doesn’t own a single hotel room. It has disrupted the business model by reducing both the cost of demand and supply to next-to-nothing.
- 50% of all business ground transportation costs in the U.S. are paid to Uber. And, it doesn’t own a single vehicle.
- Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, said in a recent interview with McKinsey and Company, “We can’t be an industrial company anymore. We need to be more like Oracle. We need to be more like Microsoft.”
Given these changes—and those to come—what role must the Office of Finance play as organizations change? How can it best support corporate strategy and operational effectiveness? How can Finance be viewed as a strategic partner to the business in its quest to disrupt itself and transform organizational behavior?
We explore how the Office of Finance is changing in our Manifesto. We invite you to download it, consider how your organization is changing, and how the Office of Finance needs to transform to facilitate that change.
Consider what Charles Darwin told us, “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” Does your Office of Finance have a strategy for managing today’s—and tomorrow’s—changes?