The speed of response is everything in this fast-changing corporate reporting world. In the present scenario, the volume and speed of data are increasing simultaneously. Financial reporters in every organization are asked to deliver high quality, reliable, data-driven, error-free and forward-looking financial insights to the decision makers within tight deadlines.
As data are present in bits and pieces, it is hard to gather and examine large data sets, while complex reporting process results in slow reaction times, posing a challenge in dexterity and speed in response reactions for many organizations.
The impression of fast-changing technology is emphasized in Capella research, How can delivering catch up with the high momentum of the world. Which was being formed by many organizations and their top management views. The major challenge that was being witnessed by major respondents were the change in technology. Thirty percent of the sample proposed that changes in technology were an ongoing issue, in contrast with 25% who viewed market developments, 23% who suggested regulatory issues and 23% who pondered on the need to satisfy national and international norms and quality.
Compound Domain
Reporting teams are not just viewed as the attendants of providing data, they are presumed to deeply look into the detailed information and take out information from the wide variety of ever-changing data sets. Simultaneously, the finance department must safeguard their data, as the regulatory and reputational cost of a breach is a notable risk.
Due to the advent and ever-increasing need of new technology and to harmonize, existing systems, all the firms want to have a competitive edge over the other and the finance members have to face and tackle with this dynamic environment. All the companies CFOs must be well equipped for to the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies and the effect that it brings.
The particular challenge that organizations face includes the lack of automation along with the generation of the technologies. Mainly this is due to high reporting requirements, as firms introduce physical work- around to tackle with freshly regulated wants.
According to our survey, to stand out in this corporate world the company must upgrade their IT and financial analytics tools, which was being collected from 44% respondents of which 33% identified the need to operate further efficiencies and 33% to meet faster and sharp information.
For 84% of the organizations to increase their expenses over the reporting technologies, simple and quick inventions and technologies will be their focus. The cloud, in particular, is catering to the need of the fast-changing organizations but then there are Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain etc to be given due considerations.
Expertise at a Premium
As all the reporting works are being automated as compared to the traditional system, the need for full-time employees is disappearing. Reporting team can now focus on predictive analysis and managing stakeholders relationship as most of their work can be simplified by the robots.
Reporting leaders have to find people with high technological skills to drive reporting innovations, but as per our surveys, technology and data expertise are at a premium. IT skills are most in demand (36%) followed by financial data analytics (33%) and business analytics (27%). To address this issue, there must be a strategic look at the talent they need for striking a balance between bringing in fresh blood from outside and developing existing team members.
Finance leaders have broad opportunity to analyze how reporting is delivered. CFOs have been outsourcing to increase the functional scope of these arrangements by including corporate reporting. Operating model helps to clean out unwanted processes, curtail to only the critical jobs and achieve consistency globally. It should create a more quick and flexible reporting function.
It is evident that corporate reporting will face dynamic change in the future with all new innovative technologies to move forward at a faster pace and the CFOs can deliver required.