Published on the 29/05/2017 | Written by Newsdesk

Report points to poor adoption, use of analytics for insights…

For all the talk about analytics, data driven insights and even artificial intelligence, it seems corporate finance departments are, well, a bit behind the times.

At least that is what recent research from Adaptive Insights would lead you to believe: the corporate performance management software slinger reckons, in its global CFO Indicator report, that 77 percent of CFOs admit that major business decisions have been delayed. Why? Stakeholders haven’t had timely access to data, while they are also beset by ‘significant delays’ with tasks like reporting and ad hoc analysis.

The CFO Indicator is a quarterly report that highlights what is top of mind for CFOs. This edition surveyed a very specific 271 CFOs worldwide over 18 days ending April 18, 2017.

In a statement, Adaptive Insights founder Robert Hull beat the tired old drum of ‘increasing competition, turbulence and uncertainty’ – notions which are essentially not measurable and can therefore be assumed to be meaningless, while stressing the need for ‘corporate agility’.

Hull added that CFOs can improve matters “by accelerating the speed of scenario planning and analysis. By giving key stakeholders more immediate access to data, finance can dramatically improve decision-making—the key to maximising corporate performance.”

Like most vendor-generated surveys, this one has a few dire cautions which in this case imply that the reader should buy some software. So it is that Adaptive’s CFO Indicator report ‘warns CFOs that the current pace of finance could threaten corporate agility and provides views on the practices that should be adopted to create a more forward-looking, agile environment’.

Key findings include:

• Finance teams spend 53 percent of their time on reporting and data gathering alone. This leaves many organisations looking back at history, rather than forecasting forward.
• CFOs would like their teams to spend less time on report preparation and data collection (36 percent) and more time on forecasting and scenario analysis (40 percent). More and better analysis will lead to improved agility.
• CFOs (49 percent) believe predictive analytics will most contribute to agility, followed closely by dashboards and analytics (45 percent). CFOs desire to transition away from historical reporting, and toward a more forward-looking approach.
• CFOs desire to transition away from historical reporting, and toward a more forward-looking approach.

CFOs (47 percent) say that it is taking 11+ days to get reports into the hands of stakeholders, yet they (56 percent) would like it to take no more than five days. Ad hoc analysis is also taking longer than desired, as CFOs (60 percent) say this task takes up to 5 days, yet they would like it to take no more than a day. Reporting and ad hoc analysis represent two key areas that can be improved to enable better agility.

The desire to move toward a more analytics-driven organisation appears to be impacting CFOs’ decisions when it comes to implementing technology. Dashboards and analytics top the list of future purchases, with 45 percent saying they will invest in this type of solution by 2020, followed closely by budgeting and forecasting tools (40 percent).

If this sounds like your finance department beset with significant delays, take a closer peek at the report here.