What role does the figure of the controller play (or could have) in digital transformation processes? What are the most important challenges? What are the most critical skills to successfully undertake this change?
These are the main topics discussed today at the event "Reinventing Controllership in the digital age", dedicated to the presentation of the results of a research project developed as part of the activities of the Master in Planning and Control (MPC).
The research project involved 31 companies committed to digitization issues and about 50 managers, including CFOs and Head of Controlling.
After the institutional greetings of Alessia Coeli, General Manager of ALTIS, Stefano Baraldi and Riccardo Bovetti, coordinators of the project, shared the main results of the survey. As in other business areas, digital technologies (e.g. second-generation ERP, RPA, big data and analytics, machine learning and AI) have triggered a process of change that companies tend to experience and interpret in a differentiated way, but which seems unlikely to end looking to the future.
Despite the presence of a certain "inertia" in redefining their role from a strictly organizational point of view, controllers are now called upon to make a fundamental contribution in the digital transformation processes of the business. The more than 100 use cases identified in the reality of the companies that took part in the research project clearly indicate that the "profession" of the controller is changing concretely and quickly: on the one hand, expanding and qualifying its scope of action and, on the other, developing a new skill set.
In this sense, the main challenges of a technological nature but, above all, those of a cultural nature were subsequently explored by the round table that saw the participation of Maria Foti of Shopfully and Marco Santa of Randstad.