The modern finance function is the kitchen of the organisation
The modern home kitchen is generally a hive of activity where everyone in the home feels comfortable and can access fuel (food and water) to tackle their day. It is also the place where informal collaboration feels natural. The modern finance function is also a central place that should facilitate collaboration, simplify access to information, and provide analysis and insights that fuel growth and innovation. This is where planning, budgeting, resource stewardship and therefore strategic enablement happens. Just as the kitchens of today look vastly different to those constructed 20 years ago, finance functions need to make sure they are embracing new technologies, ways of working and meeting the needs of the front line to drive growth and to manage risk.
Some key opportunities that can be considered by modern CFOs include:
How are new technologies (including AI) helping the organisation drive growth in a safe way?
How is the organisation encouraging innovation and then quickly assessing and managing risk?
When is the last time you sat down with your executive peers to ask how finance can help them achieve growth?
Is the finance function organised in a way that facilitates growth, innovation, risk management and collaboration?
Is reporting and market communication more broadly an authentic representation of the business, its strategy and its opportunity?
KSIB welcomes these challenges, and its executive team and associates have worked with hundreds of finance functions in a range of capacities. We have also developed APPRAISE Reporting, a managed service designed to provide the expert layer between your books and your auditor, saving you time and money.
Case Study 01
The risk management system and the CFO
The approach
The modern CFO plays a critical role in leading the risk management system for the organisation.
- Even in a global financial services organisation with a mature 3 lines of defence model and a strong risk culture and function, the CFO plays a critical risk management role, for both financial and non-financial risk.
- KSIB and its partner, Newton Russell, have been working together with large financial institutions to transform their risk management systems. The transformation involves the following process:
- Understanding current roles and risk management processes across the first 2 lines of defence.
- Accelerating the visualisation of critical processes and controls using AI enabled tooling.
- Eliminating redundant processes and controls; streamlining key processes and controls.
- Testing key controls continuously using AI agents with transparent and auditable tests.
- Reporting and visualising key control breakdowns immediately to control owners and executives using AI agents.
- The unstructured data underpinning the current risk management system (word documents, excel etc) is "cleaned" iteratively throughout this process, so the transformation does not need to rely on a perfect dataset.
- This approach transforms risk management from a reactive activity to a proactive activity.
Outcomes
- The CFO will be able to proactively monitor risks and continuously test both IT and business process controls.
- Role clarity is clear and defined, for humans and agents.
- All key controls are continuously tested.
- Any required remediation actions are surfaced immediately and suggested to the control owner by the agents.
- The agentic system and its recommendations are able to be challenged and audited through transparent sharing of tests and outcomes.
- The overall outcome is significantly better risk management.
APPRAISE Reporting
The expert layer between your books and your auditor, saving you time and money.
Annual financial reporting is one of the most resource-intensive obligations a finance team faces, and for most organisations, it still means weeks of manual data processing, endless auditor back-and-forth, and reports that consume far more than they should. APPRAISE was built to end that.
APPRAISE is a complete annual financial reporting solution for organisations with mandatory reporting obligations. Not a bookkeeper. Not a single consultant. A full-service team that combines purpose-built AI automation with over 80 years of collective Big 4 expertise, delivering financial statements and board reports prepared in accordance with AASB requirements, and ready for audit.
The methodology is structured across five phases (Assess, Automate, Refine, Review, and Support) covering everything from data collection and consolidation through to board-ready reporting and audit completion. AI handles the processing. Expert accountants own the outcome. The result is faster, more accurate reporting, without the manual processing, version control issues, and auditor back-and-forth that typically consume it.
APPRAISE is the right fit for organisations with mandatory reporting obligations under the Corporations Act or ACNC, multi-entity structures that strain internal teams, or finance functions spending too much of the year buried in spreadsheets rather than adding value.
Learn more about APPRAISE and its methodology outlined below at appraisereporting.com