The role that quietly became one of the most influential in finance
By Aran Purewal
Everyone is talking about AI changing finance. But from where I’m sitting, that’s only half the story.
The bigger shift is what businesses now expect from their finance teams.
I’ve noticed it most clearly in the conversations we’re having with clients. The questions have changed.
It used to be: “What are the numbers? … Increasingly, it’s: “Why are the numbers what they are, and what should we do about them?”
That might sound like a subtle difference. In practice, it’s changing the role finance plays in the business.
From reporting the past to shaping what happens next
Finance has always been responsible for accuracy, control and reporting. Those things aren’t going away. But leadership teams are increasingly looking to finance for something beyond them…
- What happens if sales slow by 10%?
- What’s our exposure to cost and cash?
- What’s stopping us from growing faster: capital, capability or appetite?
- Are our board numbers a true reflection of the business, or are they simply a lagging snapshot?
- How can we get more out of the information we already have?
These aren’t reporting questions. They’re decision-making questions.
And they’re increasingly being put to finance.
I’ve seen this shift developing for some time. In my experience, the change really started to become more noticeable following the global financial crisis, when businesses became much more focused on resilience, cash, risk and making better decisions with limited resources.
Whether that was a direct consequence of the recession or simply a broader change in how businesses were being run, the expectation has continued to grow.
Finance is no longer just explaining what happened. It’s increasingly being asked to help determine what happens next.
Technology hasn’t replaced finance. It’s raised the expectation.
There is an obvious reason this conversation has accelerated; technology has become exceptionally good at processing information.
Reporting is faster. Data is more accessible. Automation has removed a significant amount of manual work from the finance function.
That’s a good thing.
But there’s an important distinction between having more information and making better use of it.
Businesses now have access to more data than ever. The challenge is turning that data into something meaningful: analysis that is easy to understand, relevant to the decision being made and useful enough to change what happens next.
That’s where the value of finance is moving away from simply producing information, towards interpreting it, challenging it, and helping the business act on it.
Technology can process the numbers. It can’t decide which assumptions deserve challenging, explain the commercial implications to a sales director or persuade a board to change course.
That still requires people.
Why FP&A has become so important
One of the clearest examples of this shift is FP&A.
A few years ago, many growing businesses didn’t have dedicated Financial Planning & Analysis capability. Today, we’re seeing far greater demand for it.
That’s not simply because businesses want better forecasts. It’s because they want a better understanding of what’s likely to happen next.
FP&A sits at an interesting point between finance and the wider business.
Done well, it connects financial information with operations, sales, investment planning and long-term strategy. It can help a leadership team understand the consequences of different choices before making them.
That might mean modelling what happens if growth accelerates, understanding the impact of a pricing decision, assessing whether the business has the cash or capacity to invest, or identifying a problem early enough to do something about it.
In a world where businesses have more data than ever, the ability to turn that data into useful commercial insight is becoming increasingly valuable.
What we’re seeing in the hiring market across the South of England
National reports tell one story. Our clients tell us another.
Across the South, we’re seeing businesses continue to invest in finance capability, but the emphasis of those roles is changing.
Technical competence remains essential. But increasingly, it’s only the starting point.
When we talk to clients about senior finance appointments, stakeholder management and communication come up again and again; they want people who can hold their own in a room with a sales director. People who can challenge assumptions without creating friction. People who can explain a complex number in a way that a non-finance stakeholder can understand and, importantly, act on.
That ability to translate finance into a language the wider business understands can make a significant difference.
For example, when a business is raising funding, the numbers need to be right. But so does the story around them. The ability to explain the numbers clearly, build confidence and gain buy-in can influence the outcome.
That’s a very different expectation from simply producing an accurate report.
What does this mean for business leaders?
The technology will continue to evolve. Finance processes will become increasingly automated. But I’d be cautious about assuming that investing in technology automatically makes a finance function more strategic. It doesn’t.
The technology can create the capacity. The organisation still needs to decide what it wants that capacity to achieve.
That means thinking carefully about the structure of the finance team, the capability within it and the role finance is expected to play in commercial decision-making. The strongest finance functions aren’t necessarily the ones producing the most sophisticated reports. They’re the ones helping the business ask better questions and make better decisions.
Ultimately, businesses don’t invest in finance because they want better reports. They invest because they want better decisions.
Continue the conversation
Understanding how the finance function is changing is one thing. The more important question is whether your own finance function has kept pace.
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