Richard Baker, head of CFO Practice at Carter Schwartz, discusses why all business divisions need to embrace data and digital transformation to optimise business performance.

Today’s global healthcare marketplace is experiencing unprecedented transformation. Whilst digital has been on the to-do list for quite some time for business leaders, with the shift to hybrid office/home working causing cyber security concerns, a desire to provide real-time incisive data to enable them to move faster and get quicker and better returns (and maybe competitive advantage) and creating new forms of business engagement with customers, there has become a sharper focus on digital transformation.

Business leaders are encouraging their finance team to give them more accurate, timelier, and more detailed data, that marketing and sales create a seamless customer journey and that HR ensures the all-important employee engagement.

Last year it was about scorekeeping, cost control, and navigating through the difficult Covid times ensuring business survival. 

Today, the requirements are to provide operational leaders with real-time performance data across the whole organisation and insightful competitor analysis coupled with an effective route to the customer – the buzzwords are big data, analytics, AI, SAAS, and cyber security, with a deep understanding of future regulatory and political risks is more important than ever.

It really is a case of snooze and you lose – leadership needs to be tech-savvy and ready to embrace the changes needed and drive them across all areas of the organisation.

Private Equity investors are looking at the leaders within their investments and asking two key questions: 

1. What is their digital strategy to ensure they are not left behind by competitors? 
2. Does the leadership have the skills and appetite to meet these challenges and then execute them?

Insight from Richard Baker, Head of CFO Practice at Carter Schwartz.

With 28 years of recruitment exposure, as well as being ACMA qualified and having held FD positions throughout his career, Richard truly understands challenges faced with changing regulation and private equity environments.

richard@carterschwartz.co.uk

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/rbaker6/