A Gartner Research Reveals which Industries invest the most in Corporate Finance

Gartner has conducted a research to determine which industries spend the most within the office of the CFO in relation to their revenue. The top spenders are found within the Software and Internet Service Sectors. Gartner attributes this level of higher investment partially to these industries' higher focus on digitization as compared to others. In contrast, the beverage industry is at the low scale of corporate finance spend. To analyze spend, Gartner considered the following expenses:

‍

• In-house salaries, benefits, and bonuses 
• Training and development
• Travel and Entertainment
• Finance technology spend including software, hardware, shared IT services, and external contractors
• Outsourcing, consultants, and professional services

External audits were not captured as part of the expenses in this research. 

‍

Expenses fall into the following areas within the office of the CFO:

‍

1. Finance Management and Administration
2. FP&A
3. Accounting and Reporting
4. Transactional Finance 
5. Tax
6. Treasury 
7. Investor Relations
8. Internal Audit 

One important item highlighted by Gartner is that a higher cost of finance does not necessarily indicate a better-run finance shop. Some companies and industries with lower expenses could be operating with higher efficiencies. 

‍

‍Read the Full Gartner Article

‍