Accounting and finance leaders are under constant pressure to manage a growing portfolio of demands. But how do they, or can they, measure success?
Many internal key performance indicators can be used to gauge progress in various areas. But at some point, leaders can also benefit from asking the simple question, “How are other companies doing this?”
No matter how well your department feels it manages its operations, no organization can — or should — exist in a vacuum. That’s why Robert Half has teamed with Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) to produce Benchmarking the Accounting & Finance Function 2017. The report, now in its eighth year, is based on survey responses from more than 1,400 financial leaders at public and private organizations in the United States and Canada. It also includes insights from follow-up interviews with select financial executives.
This year, we found many accounting and finance organizations are facing challenges — especially around recruiting and retaining skilled talent for their teams.
We begin with a discussion of workforce management trends, then report on how companies and their finance leaders are handling the everyday operations of the accounting and finance function.
Other topic areas include trends in outsourcing, cloud technology adoption, automation and the burden of compliance demands. In addition, we’ve highlighted comparisons between the new data and previous years’ data and noted any trends or significant differences.