Business Enablement: Building Future-Fit Finance

Johannesburg October 2026 - Tiger Brands is investing in people, digital fluency and commercial capability to strengthen Finance as a strategic business partner.

The role of Finance is changing. In a business environment shaped by data, technology and increasingly complex commercial demands, Finance is no longer only responsible for reporting what has happened. It is increasingly expected to help shape what happens next.

This is where business enablement becomes critical.

At Tiger Brands, business enablement is about equipping people with the capabilities, insights and tools to support better decisions, strengthen collaboration and help the organisation respond with greater agility. The launch of the Business Enablement Academy on Friday, 18 September, marks an important milestone in this journey, strengthening the future-fit capabilities of Finance professionals across the organisation.

The Academy has been designed to strengthen the skills required to succeed in an increasingly digital and data-driven world. It will help Finance professionals deepen their commercial understanding, strengthen business partnering capabilities, build digital fluency and, importantly, turn insight into meaningful business impact.

For Tiger Brands, this is more than a learning initiative. It is an investment in the organisation's people and in its ability to build the capabilities required for long-term performance and competitiveness.

Opening the launch, Thushen Govender, Chief Financial Officer at Tiger Brands, reinforced the evolving role of Finance and the importance of developing commercially astute business partners who can connect with broader business priorities.

The shift is significant. Finance increasingly needs to understand what sits behind the numbers, ask the right questions and help colleagues make informed decisions. Its value is not only in measuring performance, but in helping the business understand what the information means and how it can be translated into action.

For a consumer goods business operating across a dynamic market, this capability is particularly important. Decisions across manufacturing, supply chain, procurement, sales, marketing and other areas have financial implications. Equally, financial insight can help identify opportunities, highlight emerging risks and support the business in responding to changing market conditions.

Business enablement therefore requires Finance professionals to operate beyond traditional functional boundaries.

The launch marked an important milestone in Tiger Brands' capability-building journey, with the introduction of customised training programmes designed to support the Finance community throughout its learning and development journey. The programmes are tailored to build the competencies required for a future-fit Finance function, while creating practical opportunities for participants to strengthen their capabilities and apply their learning in the business. The launch also featured a keynote address by Amy Fane Hervey, founder of ARCHITECH, who explored how organisations can combine human and machine intelligence to create value in an increasingly AI-driven economy.

Her message reinforced an important principle for the future of work. While technology continues to transform how organisations operate, human judgement remains essential. Curiosity, critical thinking, commercial understanding and the ability to interpret context will continue to differentiate effective decision-making.

For Finance, digital fluency is therefore about more than adopting new technology. It is about understanding how technology can improve the speed, quality and relevance of insight, while applying sound judgement to determine what that insight means for the business.

The Academy is underpinned by a Finance Competency Framework comprising 12 future-focused competencies, including business acumen, digital fluency, stakeholder management, critical thinking, analytics and financial stewardship.

Together, these competencies reflect the broader evolution of Finance from a function that reports on performance to one that actively enables it.

There is also a clear talent imperative. Organisations cannot build future capability solely by looking externally for the skills they need. Growing talent from within creates an opportunity to develop people who understand the organisation, its brands, consumers and operating environment, while equipping them with capabilities that will remain relevant as the business evolves.

This is central to the Academy's purpose.

By investing in its people, Tiger Brands is creating opportunities for Finance professionals to expand their capabilities, strengthen their commercial perspective and contribute more meaningfully to the decisions that shape the business.

As the programme evolves, the Academy will also help create a more connected community of Finance professionals who can collaborate across functions, share knowledge and contribute with greater confidence to the organisation's strategic priorities.

The value of this approach extends beyond Finance. Strong business enablement creates stronger connections between insight and execution, allowing functions to work together more effectively and make decisions informed by both financial discipline and commercial reality.

For Tiger Brands, building future-fit Finance capability is therefore part of a broader commitment to building the organisational capability needed for tomorrow.

The numbers remain important. But increasingly, the value lies in what people do with them.

Through the Business Enablement Academy, Tiger Brands is investing in a Finance community equipped not only to understand performance, but to influence better decisions, enable growth and contribute to sustainable value creation.

That is the journey from insight to impact, and it begins with building the capability to make it this is how insight becomes impact—and how Tiger Brands is building the capability to shape what comes next.