The manufacturing CFO’s guide to driving growth

CFOs navigate a variety of challenges every single day. Key right now in the manufacturing sector are supply chain challenges, and they're constantly analyzing data; that is a critical factor.

The need to have on-time data is number one. When they are looking at the supply chain, they want to make sure that they are accessing the most efficient supply chain, having access to that data so that they know what's coming in that they can make sure to supply for their customers that's critical.

Next, they want to make sure to manage their costs. E.g.: Do they need to onshore or nearshore? That's not a fast thing to be able to manage. So, what are their options?

• Can they move vendors?
• Do they have secure vendors?
• Do they have the ability to potentially change vendors or diversify their supply chain?

Having that ability to be flexible is critical as well.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the buzz word of the day. Potentially, people want to implement everything they possibly can in robotics, and it's definitely a great tool. However, CFOs want to make sure that they have the stability in their technology before they go implement every possible tool. That's critical piece number one.

And do they have the workforce to support that as well? Team members need to be trained up on technology before they can implement the technology. We've seen a lot of people implement technology and then have no idea how to use it, and then it became a botched implementation. A lot of times it's a user issue as well. Making sure that there is a proper implementation and trained workforce too.

There are a lot of great ways to use AI and robotics to automate and improve processes. It's a matter of having that stability and examining what is in place and what's going to work really well.

You don't want to just go automate everything. Will it be efficient and what's the most effective utilization of that technology? Examining what makes the most sense for the business and making the process right before automating everything. Using AI to make everything better is not necessarily always the answer.

Scenario planning is a tool that CFOs or other team members can use to examine a variety of scenarios. Whether that be:

• Is this option cost effective for me?
• Is this geographical impact going to impact our business in a critical way?
• How can we toggle between this critical impact to our business, or should we nearshore or should we utilize this other supplier?

Utilizing scenario planning with a proper financial planning and analysis (FP&A) vendor or an in-house analyst is critical in this time. Having the ability to be flexible with data and utilize the right data could mean a huge impact with the business.