CFOs and senior finance executives are dealing with a growing number of responsibilities and demands as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report.
The report, from consulting firm Protiviti, found that the pandemic has been a wake-up call to finance departments that weren’t already investing, or weren’t investing enough, in cloud-based systems as they have struggled to shift to the remote work environment. Eighty percent of the 1,057 finance leaders surveyed ranked security and privacy of data as a top priority, while 78 percent cited enhanced data analytics, and 72 percent cited cloud-based applications.
Heather H. Wilson, Chief Executive Officer of CLARA Analytics, has more than a decade of executive experience in data, analytics and artificial intelligence, including Global Head of Innovation and Advanced Technology at Kaiser Permanente and Chief Data Officer of AIG. She currently sits on Equifax's board of directors. While at AIG, she was named the Insurance Woman of the Year by the Insurance Technology Association for her data innovation work. Wilson has been a steady supporter of diversity. She launched the Kaiser Permanente Women in Technology group, focused on mentorship and retention for women in math, technology and science, and at AIG, she launched Global Women in Technology and served as Executive Sponsor of Girls Who Code.
Sudhir Chaturvedi is president and executive board member of LTIMindtree.
He leads a dynamic sales, marketing and alliance team globally, and is a member of the board of Syncordis Consulting, a subsidiary of LTIMindtree, based in Luxembourg. Since joining LTIMindtree, Chaturvedi has been a key strategist of the company's transformation that is widely visible across brand development, market development and business development activities.
Peter Boerhof is senior VAT director at Vertex Inc.
Of those respondents who are CFOs and vice presidents of finance, 72 percent ranked cloud-based applications as a top priority to address over the next 12 months. Seventeen percent ranked cloud-based applications as the most important finance priority for their organizations to address, signifying a big jump from the 8 percent of respondents who indicated so in a similar survey by Protiviti last year.
“Having the right technology infrastructure and cloud capabilities is now considered a baseline in order to operate effectively and efficiently and will continue to be as organizations move into a hybrid work environment,” said Chris Wright, managing director and global leader of Protiviti’s Business Performance Improvement practice, in a statement. “COVID-19 disruptions underscored the critical nature of a truly digital finance workforce and companies without advanced technologies and digital processes faced a difficult transition to remote work. We’re now seeing an increasing number of boards and CEOs tap their finance leaders for guidance about whether their organization is allocating enough resources to their technology infrastructure.”
Labor models are changing, in part as a result of the pandemic, with 18 percent of the finance leaders surveyed saying their organizations are relying on managed services providers, while 29 percent are augmenting their staff to handle financial planning and analysis with greater speed and agility.
