Accenture Survey Reveals Most Finance Teams are Too Reactive
Accenture has conducted a survey of 550 CFOs. The results should be a wake up call to financial chiefs. There is no surprise we are living in an environment of heightened uncertainty. Yet, this survey indicates that 53% of finance teams are too reactive in meeting the business needs for financial insight. At the same time, demands from the business for financial analysis support has increased by 63%.
What is causing this gap?
Most finance teams are spending 85% of their time preparing data and only 15% analyzing it. Accenture makes the case that this ratio has to flip for FP&A teams of the future to effectively manage their environment and navigate the enterprise forward. The amount of time preparing data must lower to 15% and the amount devoted to analyzing data should increase to 85%. In summary, finance teams of the future will be required to be less reactive and more strategic.
Accenture brings up the traditional business pillars as to what needs to change for these ratios to flip: data, technology, talent and processes. Normally we label these pillars as people, process and technology. Accenture decided to break out data and technology as separate pillars in this study.
Read the full report to capture Accenture’s recommendations to improve each of these pillars and to convert finance into a predictive powerhouse.