Technology has completely overtaken the business world with new applications that stretch into all realms of company operations. Whether it’s marketing, sales, customer acquisition, management, or even finance, these tools can give executives and shareholders a more efficient way of carrying out certain activities.

Thinking of technology in finance isn’t always a popular notion. Still, it’s an important one that can significantly transform the way businesses raise capital and investors procure shares in a company. As business applications evolve with time, new forms of technology change the way enterprises handle financial matters. By the end of 2022, the fintech industry will quickly grow to a $26.5 trillion value at a 6% CAGR.

So if technology now serves the finance and fundraising department, what kinds of software should founders and CFOs start using? Here are some features and categories you should be looking into today.

1. Cloud-based

Cloud computing technology has been on an exponential rise. According to Vormetric, 85% of businesses keep some form of sensitive data in a cloud-based system, including financial reports.

Cloud computing has allowed for finance applications that will enable accountants and finance officers to track, update, and store financial information online without having to worry all the time about security, making it a must-have in any CFO toolkit.

You can store any financial information on cloud systems expenses, income, shareholder value, stocks, and so on. Digital securities have taken over the private capital market with the unprecedented rise of cloud-based and other technology forms in building, acquiring, and monitoring digital securities. This reality brings us to the next state of technology that is changing the realm of finance.

2. Programmable

Ever since smart contracts came into play, the world of finance has radically changed. Companies and their teams, and now even CFOs, use programmable algorithms in some format.

Quoroom is one good example of a programmable digital share registry and investment workflow platform that provides investors with digitized records of shares. The service allows companies to automate issuance and management of share or debt classes and securities, therefore complete funding round faster and more effectively cost-wise. It has also become a great value add to investors looking to invest and close deals digitally and then have fully digitized access to their securities, secondary transfers and reporting.

3. Automated

Many CFOs and finance professionals have started extensively using digital ledgers to manage share registers. Innovations as such also point us to the importance of having partially or even fully-automated CFO tools.

Unsurprisingly, one of the reasons people turn to technology is to make their lives easier and to save time, energy, and resources. One of the main ways that technology does that is to maximize the use of automation.

Any CFO tool that a busy and time-poor finance officer or a startup founder must start using has to have some level of automation that can take care of repetitive tasks and activities with little to no input from the user. Some of the most common automation includes alerts and notifications, triggers, and mass payment.

4. Data-Driven

This highly digitized world today revolves around data. The data sciences is a relatively young tech and innovation branch, but it has skyrocketed into one of the most influential ones.

The most common example of data-driven technology is social media, which gives advertisers the ability to target and retarget ads based on a person’s provided data, including location, age, demographic, interests, and search history.

Just like social media, some of the best CFO software tools are highly data-driven as well. When using digital ledgers to manage share registers, data-driven features allow for faster search, filtering, analysis, and interpretation. With the power of data-driven technology, finance professionals have a more robust dashboard that summarizes even the heaviest of finance activities with ease.

5. Secure

Security is another non-negotiable feature that any CFO tool or private company shareholder software must most definitely have. It’s not a secret that finance-related data is often confidential and sensitive. Without the proper data encryption and security protocols in place, a CFO tool can become a recipe for financial disaster. We live in a day and age where hackers and malware are constantly out phishing for financial information or private data to scrape money from. Having tools with the strictest levels of data privacy protection is a requirement no one must waiver.

Take, for example, running fundraising efforts. Anything from bid, investor or donor data, bank details, or any other form of funder or company information must be kept with strictest confidence at all times. FinancesOnline shares a list of fundraising and donation management software examples that provide great security.

The Future of Finance is Digital

Gone are the days that finance professionals keep equity, shares, and securities strictly in paper format. All financial institutions are starting to move towards digital solutions to increase speed and accuracy. So any CFO or founder that’s looking to raise, manage, or track funds will be smart to use digital solutions and software as much as possible.