Seven out of ten surveyed CFOs do not plan to reorganize the departments they manage in the next two years, according to the report “2024 Central Europe CFO Survey – Finance operations” prepared by the consulting company Deloitte. The main reason is the lack of environmental stability.
The authors of the report emphasize that in recent years, Central European companies have struggled with many challenges resulting from political and economic events. The answer to these challenges is to be organizational and operational coherence. 70 percent subjects CFO it does not plan to introduce any significant changes in its departments in the next two years. According to the report's authors, such a distribution of responses is a manifestation of a growing trend operational stability financial departments. One of the surveyed financial directors stated that the decrease in demand for changes may result from many transformations carried out in recent years.
“Most financial directors are definitely against carrying out major organizational changes in times of widespread instability. This seems understandable, because such processes usually take many years and require appropriate preparations. On the other hand, a number of challenges companies are currently facing and the ongoing digitization of processes accountants mean that the financial industry must be ready to take actions aimed at adapting to the new operating conditions,” said a partner in the team Business Process Solutions, Deloitte Damian Grońskiquoted in the release.
Trends in financial departments
As part of the survey, CFOs from Central Europe indicated the trends that, in their opinion, have the greatest impact on the activities of the departments they manage. The area that received the most responses was progressive repetitive automationprocesses (60%). The issue of implementation came second artificial intelligence and machine learning in the functioning of the financial department (39%). The same percentage of respondents said it was crucial recruiting employees with appropriate qualifications. 35 percent responses concerned the need to adapt the business to the regulator's requirements, while every third respondent considered striving to reduce costs to be the most important.
“Improving the efficiency of operations and appropriate management of human resources are currently the main areas of interest of financial directors. In both cases, tools using artificial intelligence can play an extremely important role. Thanks to them, it will be possible to automate the simplest activities, which in turn will allow employees of financial departments to focus on other activities. The possibilities of reducing the operating costs of the entire department are also important,” Groński added.
Key processes internally
The authors of the report emphasize that most directors of financial departments prefer to leave key processes within the structures of their organization. The only area that managers would transfer to external subcontractors is transfer pricing documentation – this option was indicated by every second respondent. In the case of other activities, such as accounting services, approximately 70 percent respondents were in favor of keeping them within the company.
Among the benefits of transferring some processes to SSC centers or GBS the most frequently mentioned is gaining access to modern technologies. Equally important is the ability to use the knowledge of external experts and reduce the costs of operating the financial department. Experts emphasize, however, that a significant challenge in this area is trust, the lack of which makes it impossible to maximize the benefits of cooperation with shared services and business services centers.
The supplement to the main report “Deloitte Central Europe CFO Survey 2024” is based on a survey conducted between October and December 2023 among 475 financial directors from 15 Central European countries, including Poland.
(ISBnews)
