I think [finance is] involved enough. If they get further involved, we will be making too many decisions via spreadsheet. I’d rather still have some business acumen and anecdotal discussions with customers and partners to help drive decisions.”Director of Sales,
Power & Utilities
CFOs have worked hard to play a more prominent role within the organization.
They have proven their mettle by helping their companies navigate through:
- complex SOX requirements
- financial crises
- rapid advances in technology
All of which have fundamentally changed how companies operate.However, as priorities shift to meet market demands, business executives expect finance’s priorities to change with them. Finance needs to make sure that it continually improves its foundation — effective process execution and cost-efficient spending while continuing to streamline the organization. It needs to accomplish these improvements quickly and move to align with business priorities.
Proving relevance to the business means aligning priorities. In our recent survey, we asked respondents to rank several business priorities in order of importance. Both finance executives and senior business decision makers placed revenue planning at the top of the list: 78% of finance executives considered it very important, versus 81% of senior business decision makers. From there, however, priorities diverged.
This disconnect in priorities between finance and the business hampers finance’s ability to prove its value as a strategic business advisor. To close the gap, finance needs to break the siloed barriers and forge stronger ties with the business so that it can understand the issues throughout the organization and provide the right level of support in the business’s priority areas.
Many of the business’s priorities involve planning, risk management and forward-looking analytics rather than the historical analysis that finance organizations traditionally excel at performing.
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