The 2020 CFO Benchmark Report: Available for Download
Prophix
Mar 10, 2020, 2:24:00 AM
How far along is your Finance department with developing FP&A maturity? Are you stuck with spreadsheets, or headed to the cloud? More importantly, how does your progress compare to your peers — and how can you move forward faster?
To answer these questions, Prophix joined forces with the CFO Leadership Council for a first-of-its-kind survey and report. The 2020 CFO Benchmark Report: Finance Department Challenges, Capabilities & Solutions collects responses from nearly 400 Finance leaders. These responses clearly show what the biggest challenges and opportunities are for Finance professionals everywhere.
But we didn’t want to leave you with benchmarks and no next steps. So we asked Finance leaders and expert analysts to add their observations.
Read the report for insight from:
Jack McCullough President, CFO Leadership Council | David Chase CEO, Managing Partner, Advanced CFO | Magnus Lind CEO, Skanör Group. Author of ‘FINANCE UNLEASHED’ |
Jerry Freedman Principal, Freedom Business Management | David Huber Vice President, Marsh & McLellan Companies | Tom Hood President & CEO, Maryland Association of CPAs & The Business Learning Institute |
Lack of FP&A Maturity Traps CFOs in Low-Value Tasks
Being in the developing stage of FP&A means that organizations are wasting time on low value, manual tasks, such as manipulating spreadsheets. Our survey found a direct correlation between FP&A maturity and reduced spreadsheet time.Elite CFOs with the right solutions can increase their productivity by more than 30%. That is like receiving $100,000 in free strategic consulting every year!
Jack McCullough
FP&A Transforms Organizations
Modernizing your Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) can transform your Finance department, making it more efficient while identifying new areas of opportunity to advise the organization. Despite the potential, however, our research found most organizations are still in the early stages of FP&A transformation. Fifty-one percent of respondents to our survey said they are in the “developing” stage of FP&A, while only 2% say their FP&A is leading edge. The pursuit of FP&A maturity is a key opportunity for CFOs. But how do we level up?I think this is a chance to augment our intelligence in Finance and accounting and move up the value chain to much higher value activities like predictive analytics, business model transformation and partnering across the organization.
Tom Hood
Three Major Roadblocks to Better FP&A
Deploying a mature and effective FP&A strategy can transform organizations for the better. However, there are challenges to deploying new technology and processes. The CFOs we surveyed identified three factors that are slowing down transformation:- Human Resources: Lacking the right people and the resources to hire them.
- Time: Too many other priorities competing for CFO attention.
- Financial Resources: Budgetary constraints making it hard to invest in new tech.
Meeting The Four Top Challenges for Finance Leaders
In our survey, Finance department leaders identified their top four challenges:- Forecasting
- Strategic Planning
- Risk Management
- IT Technology