See how the new CFO is adapting to a changing financial landscape, utilizing transformative new technology to disrupt, innovate and generate value for the oil and gas sector.

THE CFO IN OIL AND GAS#CFOReimagined

“The CFO is uniquely positioned to lead the pivot into renewable fuel sources and emerging segments.”

Global message 3

Introduction 4

Rebalancing the talent base 6

Insight for a shifting landscape 5

A new level of technology- 8 enabled efficiency

Actions for oil and gas CFOs 10

Contents

The CFO Reimagined: Oil and gas2

#CFOReimagined

CFOs have long been responsible for producing the numbers and managing technology costs. Today, they are continuing to push the boundaries of automation and are increasingly harnessing data to enhance analysis and generate insights. They are also looking beyond the borders of the finance function, proposing and shaping business models throughout the enterprise. Ideally, they are leading the charge in deciding how to invest in digital, guiding their organization into the next evolution.

Based on a large survey of CFOs and up-and-coming finance professionals, as well as interviews with leaders from top global companies across multiple industries, the findings uncover the CFOs’ ambitions, priorities and obstacles.1

The CFO has an expanded remit to:

• Create more revenue streams.

• Manage down total costs.

• Share insights across business functions.

• Advise the CEO.

• Improve risk and compliance.

• Increase enterprise value.

• Steward the digitalization of the entire enterprise.

But CFOs (and the entire C-suite) must seize this moment.

Many CFOs face significant challenges as they take on a broader role. Our research reveals how they can leverage technologies, skills and relationships to ensure their companies can transform and prosper.

Now is a pivotal moment for CFOs. Our new research on the dynamic role of the finance function reveals how the CFO is positioned at the center of the organization, side-by-side with the CEO, turning finance into an engine that can power the entire enterprise.

1. Accenture carried out a quantitative survey of more than 700 CFOs and senior finance executives, including 69 from energy businesses, as well as a separate survey of 200 up-and-coming finance professionals. We also conducted almost 50 qualitative interviews with CFOs, CEOs and CDOs.

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The CFO Reimagined: Oil and gas

In response to these challenges, oil and gas companies have been rethinking their approach to capital expenditure. Where once may have been appetite for large-scale assets that take decades to realize their potential, many are now exploring projects that will deliver results over a much shorter and more predictable timeframe.

Today, as the industry enters a low-price phase of the commodity cycle, businesses are looking to invest in growth. They want to diversify their asset portfolios, they are keen to adopt new productivity-enhancing technologies, but they remain cautious.

In this environment—as demonstrated by Accenture’s latest research, The CFO Reimagined: From Driving Value to Building

the Digital Enterprise, the CFO will be instrumental in providing the vision, guidance and insight that the industry needs to embrace the future.

“The CFO is uniquely positioned to lead the pivot into renewable fuel sources and emerging segments,” asserts Jonathan Smith, Resources, Asia-Pacific Managing Director, Accenture. “That’s where we see the sector going and the CFO will be absolutely key to enabling the strategy and driving momentum.”

Above all, finance professionals need to be comfortable with change. “Organizations have to be more nimble and better able to pivot between backward looking and forward looking,” believes Christopher Weber,

Executive Vice President and CFO of Halliburton. “They have to be both strategic and focused on getting the books closed and ensuring all the proper controls have rigor. It’s a hard balance to strike so it takes really talented leaders.”

As they exert an even greater amount of influence in their businesses, we see oil and gas CFOs embracing three key priorities:

• Driving new richness from data.

• Rebalancing the traditional skills profile.

• Adopting a new wave of efficiencies.

The oil and gas sector has experienced its fair share of uncertainty in recent years, marked by volatility in commodity prices, widespread geopolitical change and growing competition.

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The CFO Reimagined: Oil and gas

To navigate an uncertain environment, oil and gas businesses need advanced insight into the risks and opportunities on the horizon.

Insight for a shifting landscape

In turn, when CFOs provide analytics to the rest of the business, they indicate that the clear majority of their guidance has been to support scenario planning, stress testing and risk assessments.

Providing this intelligence means taking greater ownership over data, across the entire enterprise. More than eight in ten oil and gas CFOs (84 percent) agree that the CFO should be the ultimate authority on an organization’s data. They are also looking beyond the boundaries of the organization, to combine internal data sets with external sources of industry information: a healthy 74 percent say their finance executives are highly competent at driving insight from this activity.

Accenture’s Peggy Krendl, Global Resources CFO & Enterprise Value Managing Director, says CFOs are using this analysis to give an expert view on how to achieve pricing optimization and manage the impact of fluctuations in global prices and FX on cash flow. “We also see clients exploring disruptive technologies, such as advanced data modelling and AI, to get to the next level of analysis,” she says. In Accenture’s “Think Bold to Lead” survey, more than 80 percent of respondents said digital is enabling additional risk analytics, pricing analytics and predictive services.

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The CFO Reimagined: Oil and gas

To ensure the finance function can provide optimum strategic insight, the CFO is taking a critical look at the skills profile of the existing team.

Rebalancing the talent baseOf all sectors in our survey, CFOs in oil and gas are the least likely to believe that traditional finance and accounting skills are must-haves in their teams. They are also the most likely to believe that dedicated compliance roles (26 percent) will become obsolete.

Daniel Gentili, General Manager Finance, INPEX Australia, notes that traditional skills will not disappear completely, however. “You still need the ten percent of people who are going to be the stable balancing act in the finance department,” he says. “But you need

probably 25 percent who are willing to be inquisitive and resilient and give change a go. If you’ve got that sort of blend, the rest will follow.”

In the immediate future, the priority will be to bolster the established skills base with talent that can help the business understand and accept a bold new narrative. In our survey, for example, the clear majority (86 percent) believe that data storytelling is an essential attribute for today’s finance professionals.

86%believe that data storytelling is essential.

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The CFO Reimagined: Oil and gas

FIGURE 1Respondents that believe analytical skills are a top requirement for finance.

46% Oil and gas

41% Retail

38% High tech

38% Metals and mining

36% Insurance

35% Comms and media

35% Utilities

35% Consumer goods

34% Banking

Oil and gas CFOs also see analytics and advanced data visualization as core requirements for providing the vision (see Figure 1). This is something that Murray Auchincloss, BP Upstream, is focusing on in his organization.

“What we’re grappling with is how do you take big systems, migrate them into the cloud, create visualization tools around them, put AI on top of them, then start to automate so you can create information at the user’s fingertips to drive better business decisions,” he says. “That’s a big focus for me.”

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Our research suggests that finance teams in oil and gas are using technology to drive even greater efficiencies, allowing their people to create additional value.

A new level of technology- enabled efficiency

In so doing, they are continuing the ongoing disruption of the traditional function, which Accenture outlined in its earlier survey of oil and gas CFOs, Think Bold to Lead.

One notable initiative that CFOs are taking here is to expand the evolving shared services model by moving a greater number of traditional tasks and responsibilities off-function.

Oil and gas CFOs are, for example, among the most likely to say that non-finance executives should be empowered, through digital, to take on routine and transactional finance activities. In addition, the overwhelming majority (91 percent) say digital technologies will lead to more self-service reporting, eliminating the need for much traditional finance stewardship (see Figure 2 on page 9). A high proportion—eight in ten—also believe that, thanks to digital, fewer decisions will require approval from finance.

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The CFO Reimagined: Oil and gas

FIGURE 2Respondents who believe that digital will eliminate the need for traditional finance stewardship.

91% Oil and gas

88% Utilities

82% High-tech

78% Banking

78% Retail

76% Consumer goods

75% Metals and mining

71% Insurance

62% Comms and media

Automation is another key driver of efficiency, which continues to pick up pace. “If you look at five to ten years with technology, you would presume controls are automated, constantly monitored, and you would assume that the entire part of the role becomes much easier and less onerous, so you’ll have fewer people working in it,” says Murray Auchincloss, BP Upstream. “The remit of the CFO in that stage is more about data integrity, more about judgments on accounting decisions, more about being a good partner with the IT department and making sure your people have the skills to tackle it.”

More than half of oil and gas respondents (55 percent) in our survey say they have adopted robotic process automation (RPA) across all finance executives or in scalable applications that are used by significant numbers of people.

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Actionsfor oil and gas CFOs

“We have seen the CFO morph from accountant to business partner, and now on to strategic enabler,” says Peggy Krendl of Accenture. “Simply put, there has never been a more exciting time to be a CFO in oil and gas or in any other sector.”

Daniel Gentili of INPEX Australia agrees that the role is evolving at pace. “When I first started as an accountant, the concept of the CFO didn’t exist,” he says. “There were just senior accountants who put the books together. Today, the CFO is more of an advisor to the CEO and tends to be one of the key change agents.”

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As oil and gas CFOs look to the future, our findings suggest there are three priorities to bear in mind.

Help the business embrace uncertainty—by adopting new analytics technologies, and enabling the finance team to derive insights from enterprise and external data, the CFO can play a pivotal role in leading the business to future growth, despite ongoing global challenges.

Streamline and hone with care— enhancing efficiency through digital is crucial, but caution and tact is essential when identifying which tasks to streamline and which to retain.

Empower talent with culture— finding and retaining the right skills is only half of the challenge. CFOs also need to ensure a culture is in place that encourages collaborative working and new value-adding tasks. “The culture starts with my leadership team, my direct reports and myself all leading by example,” notes Halliburton’s Christopher Weber.

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The CFO Reimagined: Oil and gas

About AccentureAccenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions—underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network—Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With 449,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com

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ContactsPeggy Krendl Managing Director, AccentureCFO & Enterprise Value, Resourcesmargaret.e.krendl@accenture.com

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