“The View from the Top” shows that CEOs see a future in which data analytics generate more powerful business intelligence. They are looking to their CFO to take an investor’s perspective while providing business support and strategic input, examining decisions through a value lens and challenging strategy from a risk perspective. They want the CFO to focus on growth, but he or she is typically mired in costs and compliance issues, wading through the numbers.
32 percent of CEOs say their CFOs don’t understand and assist them with the challenges that they face with running their organizations.
Randy Wong, KPMG Asia-Pacific Leader, Financial Management, said: ‘This report contains good and bad news for CFOs. The good news is that CEOs believe the CFO’s role will increase in importance over the next three years, compared to other C-suite roles. The bad news is that almost a third of the surveyed CEOs don’t believe their CFOs understand or assist enough with the business challenges they are facing.’
He added: ‘When KPMG asked CFOs a year ago about their roles, 60 percent were happy with the overall performance of their finance function, and on average less than 10 percent of CFOs rated any of their finance processes or services as a weakness. So there is a clear disconnect between the actual performance of the CFOs and the expectations of their bosses.
CFOs must focus on the key areas of concern – taking a more strategic approach; improving their talent management skills; leveraging technology and data better; and streamlining reporting and control tasks so that they are not bogged down in compliance and regulatory issues’.
Other key findings:
- CEOs have set a high bar for CFOs. Almost three-quarters (72%) of CEOs from high-performing organizations believe that the CFO’s role will increase in importance over the next three years, as compared with other C-suite roles.
- CEOs put a huge value on people skills and see their CFOs as lacking in them. Eighty percent of CEOs from high-performing organizations say that nothing is more important than talent management, but many also believe their CFOs can and should do a better job of managing their teams.
- CEOs value growth-oriented initiatives the most, and traditional areas of the finance function the least. Big-picture thinking and strategic approach are the most important attributes for a CFO, say 49% of CEOs.
- Technology will be a make-or-break test for CFOs. Sixty-three percent of CEOs from high-performing organizations believe that technology will have the greatest effect on the future role of the CFO.
- CFOs need to transform the regulatory burden into an opportunity—or at least avoid getting mired in the detail to the detriment of big-picture thinking. Forty-three percent believe that the stringent regulatory environment is impeding the CFO’s ability to focus on other areas, while 42% see the regulatory environment as an opportunity to derive competitive advantage.
