2023-02-16-Gartner-2023_Finance_Transformation_Leadership_Vision_21页_1mb

Leadership Vision for Finance Transformation Leaders in 2023

Core Content

This document outlines the strategic priorities and challenges for finance transformation leaders in 2023, emphasizing the need for digital agility and sustainable flexibility in response to a volatile and disruptive business environment. It provides insights into corporate risks, senior leadership priorities, and the path forward for finance functions, with a focus on autonomous finance.

Main Strategic Priorities

Finance transformation leaders in 2023 are focusing on the following top 5 priorities:

1. Lead finance transformation and organizational change initiatives

   • This is seen as a critical but challenging task, with 68% of leaders indicating it will be difficult to achieve in 2023.
   • Gartner recommends setting a clear vision, benchmarking skills, and engaging employees through sustainable efforts and inclusive decision-making.

2. Automate end-to-end processes

   • 63% of leaders find this challenging.
   • Key actions include improving standardization, using task-mining technology, and repurposing shared services to accelerate automation.

3. Efficiently plan and sequence finance transformation initiatives

   • 63% of leaders consider this difficult.
   • Gartner suggests collaborating with IT and HR, evaluating business process outsourcing, and using leading indicators to align with business strategy and macroeconomic trends.

4. Adopt robotic process automation (RPA) and hyperautomation

   • 58% of leaders find this challenging.
   • Recommendations include prioritizing RPA opportunities, integrating machine learning to enhance RPA, and leveraging outsourcing vendor capabilities through Gartner Magic Quadrant™ tools.

5. Set finance's technology strategy and roadmap

   • 57% of leaders find this difficult.
   • Gartner advises embracing composable finance technology, using the Technology Bullseye to prioritize investments, and incorporating trends like distributed enterprise, generative AI, data fabric, and cybersecurity mesh.

Key Risks and Priorities

Top Corporate Risks and Senior Leadership Priorities

• Climate & ESG Risks:
  • New Extreme Weather Events
  • Climate Activism
  • Critical Infrastructure Failure
  • ESG Implementation Challenges
• Economic Risks:
  • Financial Planning Uncertainty
  • Stagflation Expectations
  • Overzealous Cost Cutting
  • Key Material Shortages
  • Wage-Price Spiral
  • Market Effects From Higher Borrowing Costs
• Technological Risks:
  • Personal Data Regulatory Fragmentation
  • Cloud Concentration Risk
• Political Risks:
  • Escalation of Conflict in Europe
  • Evolving Sociopolitical Expectations
  • Taiwan and Pacific Commerce Interference
  • China Trade Tensions
• Talent Risks:
  • Decline in Employee Productivity
  • Workforce Planning Uncertainty
  • Increased Employee Leverage

Risk Appetite and Growth Strategies

• 64% of boards expect to increase their risk appetite in 2023-2024.
• 46% of boards are willing to accept greater risk in expanding product lines to achieve growth.
• 48% of boards cite recession and economic uncertainty as the biggest constraints to growth.
• 89% of boards agree that they are in a postdigital world, where digital is an implicit part of growth strategies.

Autonomous Finance

• Definition: An autonomous finance function is not just automated but delivers real-time and predictive insights, compliance, and strategic flexibility.
• Technology Roadmap: Requires self-learning software agents and a new mindset from CFOs.
• Gartner Insights:
  • 60% of surveyed CFOs believe autonomous finance will become a reality within the next six years.
  • 71% of boards are altering or planning to alter the enterprise economic structure to a DEA (Digital Enterprise Architecture).

Use Cases for Autonomous Finance

• Back-office: AI-enabled process mining, virtual assistants, cloud analytics.
• Middle-office: Blockchain for audit-ready continuous close, smart contracts, machine learning for data organization.
• Front-office: Decision intelligence, predictive analytics for revenue and cash forecasting.
• Office of the CFO: Decentralized finance, natural language processing for investor sentiment, cryptocurrencies for digital asset markets.

Gartner Support

• Events:
  • Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference (May – June 2023, National Harbor, MD)
  • Gartner CFO & Finance Executive Conference (September 2023, London, U.K.)
• Resources:
  • Guide to Building a Finance Technology Roadmap (five-step process)
  • Webinar: Move Towards an AI-Forward Autonomous Finance Future
  • Research: 4 AI Implementation Lessons From Leading Organizations
  • Research: Digital Finance Transformation via AI-Enabled Outsourcing

Contact Information

• U.S.: 1855 811 7593
• International: +44 (0) 3330 607 044
• Become a Client: gartner.com/en/finance

Conclusion

The document highlights the urgent need for finance leaders to embrace digital and sustainable transformation in 2023. It outlines key risks, strategic priorities, and recommended actions to drive successful finance transformation, emphasizing the importance of technology, automation, and change management.