Egypt's Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) held on Wednesday a roundtable for an insightful discussion with some of Egypt's leading professionals, heading the finance and accounting (F&A) functions of leading corporates of the region. The roundtable focused on the corporate transition required to embrace a tech reliant future. It was attended by Sherif El Zeiny, vice president and CFO at Elsewedy Electric Group; Ahmed Gamal, Group CFO at Cleopatra Hospital Group; Samer Mostafa, CFO at Corona Chocolate Company; and Mohamed Aly, CFO at Lixil. It was moderated by Hanadi Khalife, senior director for MEA and India Operations. The group shared their experiences and aspirations and talked about, among other topics, rebuilding revenue streams, budgeting and forecasting approaches and finally, embracing new technologies and growth opportunities. IMA led the roundtable and discussed the profound digital transformation that is currently sweeping the world and impacting work and lives more than anything and how CFOs are increasingly fronting this transition while also integrating technology into their organisations across Egypt. The quest for efficiencies and process improvements has long been the holy grail for finance leaders. However, post the pandemic, digitisation and automation have emerged as the preferred routes to take to further accelerate this transition and investments into these are justified with savings in resources and gained efficiencies. What emerged during the discussion is that business success is now defined by business digitalisation as much as it is defined by a mindset shift, process overhaul and competence realignment that are transformational for organisations. Increasingly CFOs and their teams are the primary sponsors of such transformation and are taking the lead first in transforming themselves and then their organisations. "It has been great to hear some of Egypt's leading F&A luminaries share their plans of leaving the pandemic behind. A common theme that emerged from the insights was the alignment on the importance of business agility across organisations and how the pandemic is accelerating digitisation and automation in the finance function." Hanadi Khalife, senior director for MEA and India Operations, said. "The digitalisation of enterprises has been a long-standing trend, even here in Egypt but the pandemic, with its consequent surge in remote work and virtual business models, has accelerated the push toward investing in digital infrastructure. It's great to see how F&A leadership teams have been at the forefront of embracing new technologies and processes in the backdrop of a fully blown pandemic. "New technologies come with the need for new skills and here too we are seeing corporate leaders, especially CFOs bringing in the talent required to drive this change," IMA is one of the top associations for financial professionals. It offers the prestigious Certified Management Accountant (CMA) designation. The IMA's mission is to promote education and development in management accounting and finance, advocate for the highest ethics and best business practices, and provide a forum for research. IMA's CMA certification programme is an advanced-level assessment for accounting and finance professionals in business covering financial planning, performance and analytics, and strategic financial management.
