CFOs: Do You Wish Your Accounting Team had More Consistent Skills?

According to APQC’s 2018 General Accounting Open Standards Benchmarking survey, closing the books faster is one of the top priorities for today’s CFO. By closing the books faster, it frees finance teams to focus on more strategic priorities like forecasting, planning future projects, and driving efficiency and growth throughout the organization. Does your accounting team have consistent enough skills to perform?

Of the 2,300 organizations that participated in APQC’s 2018 General Accounting Open Standards Benchmarking survey, the bottom 25% by revenue said they need 10 or more calendar days to perform the monthly close process. The top performers or the top 25% by revenue can wrap up a monthly close in just 4.8 days or less — about half the time of the bottom 25%. (as reported in CFO.com).  The disparity between smaller and larger companies is at the core of why we at TGG use big company structures to facilitate small company success. 

Issues CFOs face:

• The current metric set fails to measure business performance (56%)
• Outdated financial planning (52%)
• Margin erosion due to inefficient decision making in business (50%)
• Outdated management reporting infrastructure (50%)
• Unclear ROI on new business investments (45%)
• Inflexible financial data structure (41%)
• As reported in Analytics Magazine, 82% of CFOs see the value of integrating more complex data, but only 24% think their team is up to the task.
• According to an Oxford Economics survey of CFOs, 46% say an isolated finance function keeps them from achieving their business goals. 
• 50% of respondents in a Host Analytics survey cited a lack of systems and tools and 48% cited difficulty in accessing the necessary data or reports as reasons for less than optimal efficiency.
• Less than 23% of CFOs are very confident about their company’s ability to maneuver past unforeseen business obstacles.  The survey by Kaufman Hall from CFO.com cites outdated financial planning and analysis (FP&A) tools and processes. 
• More than 50% of CFOs say they take longer than three months to complete a budget, according to the Kaufman Hall survey.

The hunt for top finance talent is yet another hurdle that CFOs have to worry about. The resources to groom finance teams are challenging for smaller companies.  The need to cut back with the COVID pandemic has taken many more robust teams and pared them down to the bare essentials.  At the same time, the big corporations have in-house training to keep their finance and accounting teams in fighting shape.  The problem begins with finding finance professionals that have a new-school mentality of problem-solving and how to take a 360-degree look at obstacles. 

TGG University

At TGG University we are dedicated to training your entire team either as a whole with our customized, in-house training or individually, by their current skill level, in our interactive online certificate courses.  If your CFO’s wish list is aligned with the CFOs referenced above, reach out to us, we can help.