Chief financial officers (CFOs) in the Mena region are driving internal growth models with greater speed and agility than ever before, creating new global benchmarks for economic growth, said an industry expert.

The knowledge economy has influenced regional financial leadership, added Microsoft Arabia CFO, Sadrul Khan, explaining how one of the most prioritised technologies by CFOs in the region is social platform monitoring IT.

“One of the five technology choices that CFOs tend to prioritise in boosting productivity, efficiencies and faster decision making in the fast paced business environment include a social platform that monitors trends, customer sentiments and helps process mashable data for customer centricity and business growth,” he said.

Khan was speaking ahead of the eighth annual CFO Strategies Forum, scheduled to be held in Dubai on October 22 and 23 the Park Hyatt Hotel.

Organised by business facilitation group naseba, the event will unveil of the region’s most advanced and creative practices for managing business financial and growth performance.

Microsoft Arabia is the Platinum Sponsor of the forum, which will attract a large gathering of the GCC’s senior CFOs.

The first ever Middle East CFO Strategies Index will be announced at the forum, which will give unique insights into Mena CFO methodologies that have been shared by the region’s financial leaders, including how the use of IT has shaped their perspectives and corporate performance.

Jaime Galviz, chief operations and marketing officer at Microsoft Gulf, said the technologically-charged relationship between Microsoft and the CFOs in the region is currently seeing GCC economic performance outstripping that of many economies outside of the region.

 “We are uniquely positioned to harmonize the world’s devices, apps, docs, data and social networks in digital work and life experiences so that regional CFOs are at the centre and empowered to do more, and achieve more with what is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity – time,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service