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.
Pragya Thakur is a National Board-certified health and wellness coach and master of public health candidate at Boston University.
She writes on wellness topics for publications including The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Law Journal Newsletter and is currently developing a book exploring how small daily shifts can create meaningful change in health and clarity.
Steven B. Goldman is a senior lecturer at MIT and director of the Crisis Management & Business Resiliency and Advanced Business Resiliency courses. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Harvard University, where he lectures on Crisis and Risk Communications, and directs the Radiological Emergency Management program.
Sandra Galletti is the assistant director of MIT's Crisis Management & Business Resiliency and Advanced Business Resiliency courses. She also serves as head of operations and resilience at Tidona Comunicazione in Milan, Italy.
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.
