SAN FRANCISCO —
The vast majority of chief financial officers say worsening macroeconomic conditions will have no effect on planned digital transformation projects in their departments. But the demand for skilled workers to mine insight from new data streams has left senior finance leaders embroiled in a war for talent that is keeping them awake at night.
New research from Tradeshift — in partnership with CFO Dive — reveals the set of challenges financial leaders face as they grapple with an expanding role and a set of strategic responsibilities that were until recently outside the scope of the finance department. In one highlight from the research, almost half of CFOs (45%) said that talent acquisition and retention was their chief worry for the rest of the year and beyond. Other top concerns included the increased cost of goods and services (42%) and technology adoption (39%).
The research also discovered significant tension in CFOs’ attitudes toward their departments’ technology strategy. While respondents generally felt positive about their recent tech investments, well over half (59%) conceded they would have taken a different approach if they’d been able to predict the events of the last few years. This tension illustrates how CFOs — as with other senior leaders — are coming to terms with the sudden evolution of their roles and responsibilities brought about by the seismic events of the last few years.
“The disruption of the last few years has put the evolution of the CFO role into overdrive, and they are now grappling with an expanding range of strategic responsibilities,” said Mikkel Hippe Brun, co-founder and general manager, payment automation, at Tradeshift. “Finance leaders recognise the decisive role technology has to play in helping them address an increasing array business-strategic challenges, from supply chain risk mitigation, through to ESG. They also recognise that any investment they make in technology requires an equal investment in human talent capable of extracting value from new data sets.”
Other key CFO concerns for the rest of the year and beyond revealed through the research include:
- Enterprises are lagging on onboarding the latest technology to help their departments do their jobs better and more efficiently. Only a third (35%) of CFOs reported that their latest tech projects had reached the implementation stage or beyond, with the majority still in the planning or proof-of-concept stage.
- The vast majority of CFOs plan to increase budgets allocated to digital transformation projects within their department. More than one in three respondents (36%) said they planned to increase …….