AI-Driven NetSuite Strategies for the Modern CFO

As the Managing Director of ONE Pacific, I've had numerous conversations with CFOs across Asia about the challenges they face in today's volatile economic landscape. In our recent "Path to Great CFO" webinar—which brought together experts from ONE Pacific, BlackLine, and Oracle NetSuite—we explored how finance leaders can navigate these challenges through technology-enabled transformation.

Rising interest rates, persistent inflation concerns, supply chain disruptions, and geopolitical tensions create a complex environment that demands strategic foresight and agility. As we move into the future, I believe CFOs must position themselves not just as financial stewards but as true business partners who can guide their organizations through uncertainty.

In my experience working with finance leaders, I've observed that the CFO and their team are the owners of the business model. They understand all that happens in a company and how it impacts the finances, so they know what levers to pull and what things they can do to change the business.

With this perspective in mind, I want to share five strategic approaches that forward-thinking CFOs should implement to navigate the future economic seas, with a focus on how NetSuite's technology and AI capabilities can support these efforts.

Strengthen Cash Flow Management and Forecasting

In uncertain economic times, cash remains king. The ability to accurately predict, monitor, and optimize cash flow has never been more crucial.

Many organizations I consult with still rely on manual processes and spreadsheets for cash forecasting, creating inefficiencies and potential inaccuracies. I consistently advise CFOs to "focus on cash flow and projecting cash flow. When you're going into maybe a little downturn, there's a higher focus on that—on managing the cash flow and definitely asking what my cash flow is going to be over the next few quarters."

NetSuite provides real-time visibility into cash positions and forecasts, allowing CFOs to make informed decisions quickly. The platform's analytics capabilities can help identify cash flow patterns and provide early warning of potential issues.

Key Action Items:

• Implement rolling cash forecasts through NetSuite
• Establish clear KPIs for working capital management
• Create early warning indicators for potential cash flow issues
• Use NetSuite's dashboard capabilities to maintain constant visibility into cash position

Leverage Automation for Financial Operations Excellence

The finance function often remains burdened by manual processes that consume valuable time and resources. In our recent webinar, Vijay Raghvani from BlackLine highlighted a troubling reality: "Finance teams have been really unfortunate in terms of the investment that they've had available to them. What we've done as a finance team is we end up buying pizza or beers or some kind of other incentive to have the finance team work through manual processes—and it's not sustainable."

This is where automation technologies become essential. As I mentioned in the webinar, "By implementing some of these efficiency and automation activities, you're really leading by example, and other parts of the organization will follow."

NetSuite's automation capabilities, particularly when integrated with specialized tools like BlackLine, can dramatically reduce manual work in areas like reconciliations, journal entries, and the financial close process.

Key Action Items:

• Automate routine reconciliations and transaction matching
• Implement workflow tools to streamline approval processes
• Deploy automation for repetitive tasks
• Modernize the financial close process through automation

In my experience working with clients, these automation initiatives represent low-hanging fruit that can deliver quick returns and set a positive example for other parts of the organization.

Develop Sophisticated Scenario Planning Capabilities

With economic uncertainties abounding, the ability to model different scenarios and their potential impacts has become indispensable. As Ignatius Siu explained during our webinar, "Forward-thinking CFOs are always using scenario planning to eliminate some of the guesswork."

NetSuite's Planning and Budgeting capabilities enable finance teams to create and compare multiple scenarios quickly. As Siu demonstrated, the platform makes it easy to copy versions of budgets, adjust key assumptions, and immediately see the impact on financial projections.

Key Action Items:

• Create base, optimistic, and pessimistic scenarios for 2023-2024 using NetSuite Planning and Budgeting
• Utilize NetSuite's predictive planning capabilities to identify trends from historical data
• Incorporate both financial and non-financial data into scenarios
• Develop preemptive action plans for each major scenario

As we saw in Siu's demonstration, NetSuite's scenario planning capabilities allow users to make top-level adjustments that automatically flow through to detailed line items, greatly simplifying what would be a complex and time-consuming process in spreadsheets.

Transform Financial Data into Business Intelligence

The modern CFO must move beyond traditional financial reporting to deliver actionable intelligence that drives business decisions. Alvin Leung highlighted this challenge in our webinar: "Today's companies have access to more data than ever before, but very few business leaders are confident that they are getting the kinds of insight and intelligence that will drive better decisions."

NetSuite's SuiteAnalytics capabilities enable finance teams to blend data from across the business to gain deeper insights. As Leung explained, Oracle offers "more than 300 dashboards and KPIs which you can use right out of the box, blending front office and back office data to get a deep analysis of every part of your business."

Key Action Items:

• Implement NetSuite's SuiteAnalytics dashboards that combine financial and operational metrics
• Break down data silos between finance and other departments
• Use analytics to identify patterns and correlations that might not be obvious from standard reports
• Move from descriptive analytics (what happened) to predictive analytics (what might happen next)

By connecting financial data with sales, marketing, and operations information, NetSuite enables CFOs to gain a complete picture of business performance and make more informed decisions.

Optimize Debt and Capital Structure

With interest rates at elevated levels compared to recent years, I advise CFOs to be strategic about their organizations' debt and capital structures. As I noted in our webinar, "Some business actions that people can take include reducing and managing debt due to rate increases. If you have variable rate debt, it's going to be a big change."

NetSuite's financial planning tools can help model the impact of different debt structures and interest rate scenarios, allowing CFOs to make more informed decisions about refinancing, restructuring, or paying down debt.

Key Action Items:

• Review and potentially restructure existing debt
• Explore fixed-rate refinancing options for variable-rate debt
• Develop a cost of capital hierarchy for funding new initiatives
• Use NetSuite's modeling capabilities to understand the impact of different financing strategies

In addition, as I pointed out in the webinar, CFOs should be "managing the impacts of a strong dollar" if they have international operations, as currency fluctuations can significantly impact profitability.

The Foundation: A Modern Financial Technology Stack

Underlying all these strategies is the need for a robust, integrated financial technology infrastructure. In my discussions with clients, I emphasize that "The base, what we call the ticket to entry, is generally having a modern ERP platform because it gives the CFO an enterprise-wide view of the operations and a single source of truth."

NetSuite provides this foundation, offering a unified platform that integrates financial, operational, and customer data. With this foundation in place, CFOs can then layer on specialized tools for automation, analytics, and planning.

The good news, as I highlighted in the webinar, is that "the technology today, especially cloud and software as a service, is a whole lot less expensive than it used to be, and it really gives smaller and medium-sized companies the same power, the same knowledge that in the past was available only to large companies."

Leading Through Uncertainty

The role of the CFO continues to evolve from financial scorekeeper to strategic business partner and change agent. In times of economic uncertainty, this evolution becomes even more crucial.

By implementing these five strategies—strengthening cash flow management, leveraging automation, developing sophisticated scenario planning capabilities, transforming financial data into business intelligence, and optimizing debt and capital structure—CFOs can help their organizations not just weather the storm but emerge stronger.

The path to becoming a modern CFO isn't about having all the answers—it's about having the right tools, processes, and mindset to navigate through uncertainty with confidence and foresight. With NetSuite as your foundation and emerging technologies enhancing your capabilities, that journey becomes not just manageable but transformative.