Workday Global CFO Survey

Finance Digital Transformation is a Key Indicator of Business Agility - Seite 2

Roadblocks to finance digital transformation are within the CFO’s control. Lack of technology skills and internal resistance to change are the two greatest challenges to digital transformation in finance. Lack of budget was the lowest rated challenge.

Finance teams are challenged to deliver insights to the wider business at a time when it is needed most. Nearly half of CFOs surveyed believe that critical business decisions are delayed because finance is not proficient in delivering meaningful insights from data. More than a third (34 percent) of CFOs cite a shortage of skills needed to work with emerging technology as a key challenge to generating these insights.

CFOs prioritize visibility and risk mitigation skills in today’s challenging environment. Top skills that CFOs need to urgently add to their team, through both hiring and reskilling, are predictive modeling/scenario planning and the ability to identify and manage risk. The lowest ranked skill is spreadsheet proficiency.

Overcoming Obstacles to Transformation
Digital transformation in finance can help transform the entire organization, the report notes. Steps CFOs can take are to prioritize technology investments that provide greater forward-looking visibility, identify and address technology skills gaps, incorporate key performance indicators (KPIs) to overcome resistance to change, and consolidate data into a single source for truth and clarity.

The report is available now and additional insights are shared in the blog, “How finance digital transformation is saving businesses—and preparing them for the future.”

Methodology
The findings in this research are based on a survey of 225 CFOs conducted March through May 2020. The majority of participants are located in the U.S. (60 percent), 30 percent are located in the UK, and the remaining 10 percent are based in a range of countries including Singapore, Australia, and Canada.

Participating CFOs work for companies across sectors, including financial services, consumer, energy, industrials, and pharma. The sample was evenly split among CFOs that work for small (<500 employees), medium (500–3,500), and large (>3,500 employees) organizations.

About Workday
Workday is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources, helping customers adapt and thrive in a changing world. Workday applications for financial management, human resources, planning, spend management, and analytics have been adopted by thousands of organizations around the world and across industries – from medium-sized businesses to more than 60 percent of the Fortune 50. For more information about Workday, visit workday.com.