Finance
CFOs and their boards are focused on three top concerns: profitable growth (72%), inflation (65%) and balance sheet health (52%).
Andy and Alice sit down to discuss predictions for the world of Finance in 2024 – are Finance leaders feeling the crunch in more than just their numbers?
Retention, Retention, Retention
The biggest challenge that finance teams have been facing for the last few years, and will continue to face going into 2024, is talent acquisition and retention.
Finance relies heavily on some particularly specialised hard skills, but the sector is struggling to bring in new blood. The world has something of a stereotypical view of finance professionals as accountants with big ledgers, who were largely just responsible for data entry. But for many years, finance has been growing into a more systems-based function That means finance professionals need a combination of skills that are getting harder and harder to find. As a result, there’s a huge fight for employees.
“I think it'll be a big problem over the next few years because as people start to say ‘I desperately need this, I'll pay extra for it’ and that does create a bit of a clamour,” notes Richard Mellors, Principal Product Manager, MHR. “Now you're always going to pay a premium for good people, but that's now going through the roof and it's not about finding new people. It’s about holding onto who you’ve got.”
As we move into 2024, competition for top finance talent will hot up. Employers should consider how they plan to attract, develop and retain these employees.
Costs are on the up
“I don't see costs reducing. I see costs increasing,” says Richard Mellors, Principal Product Manager at MHR.
Finance departments are uniquely equipped to handle rising costs and ensure that organisations can maximise profitability with what they already have.
The temptation is to lower budgets, but with current inflation rates that’s rarely viable. Equally, constantly rising costs aren’t particularly stable either. Finance departments will become even more important as we move into 2024. With improved forecasting and budgeting capabilities, they’ll be able to see which way the financial wind is blowing, and help businesses account for it.
One critical improvement is data integration. By integrating financial and operational data, we’re seeing finance departments able to create more holistic views of the entire organisation, with all the information they need at their fingertips.
That speeds up the entire process from transaction to close and doesn’t require fundamental culture shifts as other more involved upgrades might.
Autonomous finance isn’t a pipe dream
Autonomous finance is a term for processes and activities that are at least partly operated by self-learning and self-correcting software. It doesn’t just automate mundane processes, it is also capable of delivering real-time predictive insights, match compliance requirements and make your financial strategies more flexible.
The rising cost of doing business mentioned above will serve as a particular driver for this, according to Mellors. “You have to get smarter or do things in a more efficient way with the same resource that you had before. That resource is going to cost a little bit more. So you need to get a little bit more out of it and that's where automation comes in.” However, it’s unlikely that autonomous finance will push out finance employees. Instead, they’ll work as a co-pilot, removing monotonous tasks and improving efficiency.
If finance chiefs shift their perspective and attitude, opening themselves up to experimenting with autonomous finance, and using it as a tool instead of a replacement, we should see the finance function growing even stronger in 2024.
Want to find out more? Read our 2024 road map guide here