The pace of technology innovation is undeniably moving faster, growing more intelligent, and becoming inescapable. With each advancement, midsize companies are expanding the scope of their digital transformation efforts – from integrating technology into their business to fundamentally changing their workplace culture, organizational operation, and customer experiences. No organization understands this reality better than finance. The IDC InfoBrief, "The Finance Role in Best-Run Midsize Companies: Improving Decision-Making Using Intelligent Technologies," sponsored by SAP, recently revealed that finance organizations in best-run companies are embracing digital transformation and intelligent technologies such as artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and machine learning. And in return, most of them are improving timely decision-making, running more-efficient and less error-prone operational processes, and empowering knowledge workers to engage in higher-value business activities. Notably, such changes are making finance more than a highly efficient function of cash-flow insight, effective spend management, and invoice and payment processing.

Within the next two years, artificial intelligence (AI) will touch every business process, every employee, and every customer in some way. Without a doubt, this new reality will make our world easier and faster through process automation. But more transformational is the opportunity to elevate our ability to make decisions, deliver outcomes, and complete tasks in a more human way. For growing companies, this is becoming the moment when they push past the boundaries of traditional decision-making capabilities to intrinsic intelligence that is trusted, real-time, accurate, and continuously learning. In fact, according to an IDC study, over half of best-run midsize businesses view AI, machine learning, and digital assistants as critical enablers and necessities for staying competitive, compared to approximately 13% of digital laggards. Source: "Becoming a Best-Run Midsize Company: How Growing Companies Benefit from Intelligent Capabilities," IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by SAP, 2019.

Every leader has a unique perspective when it comes to the secret to business success in today's highly digitalized marketplace. Some say it's a matter of visionary digital investments or a combination of perspiration and inspiration. Meanwhile, others claim a sense of purpose as a key driver. But according to the IDC infobrief "Becoming a Best-Run Midsize Company: How Growing Companies Benefit from Intelligent Capabilities," certain attitudes are associated with higher performance. Based on insight from 1,957 executives leading midsize companies (100–1,000 employees), IDC identified the fundamentals behind business success and progress toward becoming best-run, digitally engaged organizations.