finance trends 2023

Finance

- 3 min read

2023 Finance Priority #1: Navigate through disruption

What are the top priorities for CFOs and finance leaders in 2023? Find out in this blog series! Each week, we’ll explore a new topic that’ll help you tackle the year head-on.


Priority #1: Navigate through disruption

2022 may be behind us, but the disruption that came with it is still very much present. High inflation and global conflicts have layered on top of supply chain shocks and other ongoing challenges, creating one of the most demanding environments management teams have ever faced. 

In these uncertain times, finance leaders are expected to enhance enterprises’ ability to steer performance by effectively managing cash flow, making the best use of capital, and facilitating planning and controlling of budgets to ensure the organization’s strategic goals are accomplished.

Unfortunately, acting as a strategic business partner is easier said than done. Finance teams are still plagued by spreadsheets and legacy planning tools that cannot deliver usable insights from the enterprise’s growing data volumes. As pressure to deliver rapid, business-critical insights rises, this approach is unsustainable.

Per McKinsey research from June 2022, nearly 70 percent of the top economic performers, compared with just half of their peers, are using technology to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

While finance organizations might already have accepted the importance of planning transformation, they still consider FP&A technology a capability that can be bolted onto their existing business. That approach doesn’t work. Planning transformation requires foundational change with different skill sets, practices, leadership, and organizational structures.

With continued disruption on the horizon, finance leaders must prioritize initiatives aimed at bringing the entire FP&A organization to a leading maturity state, establishing planning as a critical decision-making process, and driving effectiveness & accountability within finance teams.

Intelligent transformation is the adoption of an automated, fact-based approach to planning. It includes state-of-the-art planning tools, capable of solving traditional FP&A challenges with data, automation, and collaboration, as well as more intelligent ways of working to drive a positive impact on leadership, functional skills, and business partnering.

Through these new digital ways of working, intelligent transformation extends way beyond technologies, redefining how stakeholders collaborate, the organization’s approach to decision-making, and how management processes are conducted towards the enterprise.

Check out the other blogs in the series:

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We've pulled together the top priorities for CFOs this year in a handy eBook. Check it out!