The modern CFO faces a variety of challenges which are connected with two main areas: management and workflow.
Let’s take a look at what senior finance executives perceive as the challenges ahead with the highest priority. The given responses are from a US environment but they definitely offer some idea of the kind of challenges we can all expect sooner or later.
Workflow challenges:
- Compliance requirements
- Shrinking resources and increasing objectives
- Pressure to achieve business objectives
- Lacking capacities (urgent lack of resources)
- Internal bottlenecks
The other main challenges include quality control processes, talent retention and risk mitigation.
Resource allocation can be particularly troublesome for finance departments. A finance department needs to remain flexible in order to meet deadlines. What makes a CFO's life easier is managing successfully to build a team that is able to adjust as priorities change.
Very often, identifying potential missed deadlines or bottlenecks in the work processes is quite difficult. Such a lack of visibility is present in accounting, tax, finance, and audit. In all these areas, if work is not done in an accurate, efficient and timely manner, the result is higher costs and possible additional negative consequences, according to an article on the cfo.com website.
Take the example of tax: in this area, bottlenecks can be very dangerous as regards accuracy and deadlines. If data is delayed, the tax work is delayed as well and finalising tax filing is difficult. If the company has subsidiaries or overseas operations or franchises, it can be even more stressful.
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