According to new market research conducted by KPMG and CFO Research, finance executives are ready to shift gears and are ready to focus on business expansion, including growth and new services.
To do so, CFOs will focus on strengthening their planning, information and analytics capabilities, according to Don Mailliard, Financial Management partner at KPMG.
This after spending much of the past decade ensuring compliance with financial reporting and corporate governance requirements, or cost reduction initiatives, he says.
"We are finding that CFOs want to empower their finance organization and their C-level peers to make better business decisions aligned with a broader enterprise strategy," says Mailliard. "Years of technology spending have yielded a continued struggle for insight, and now CFOs are looking for a different approach that will help them gain that insight and convert it to action."
According to the KPMG and CFO Research series: Intelligent Finance Organizations, many CFOs are evaluating new performance tools, cloud technology and consolidation of systems as part of their expanded enterprise strategy.
In addition, almost three-quarters of respondents expect to continue the adoption of mobile devices in their organization over the next two years. Yet, many CFOs say they are challenged with quickly integrating their operations into these dynamic technology environments amid increasing security concerns.
"Mobility is a game changer for many of these organizations as a viable alternative for their most critical information," says Xena Ugrinsky, Enterprise Performance and Analytics partner at KPMG.
The survey found that CFOs are at what it calls a pivot point in their organization and have to better leverage their role as strategic information leaders to bring these aspects of their operations into sharper focus, the research shows. Nearly two-thirds of the CFOs surveyed felt their enterprise technology platform is duplicative and complex, and that financial and performance information used for decision-making is not as useful as it should be.
"It is not a surprise that CFOs are now seeing these technology enhancements as imperative," says Stephen Chase, KPMG's U.S. Technology Leader for Management Consulting. "Many organizations are realizing that subpar technology could be a considerable inhibitor to growth and business expansion."
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