Top 10 ưu tiên của CFO trong năm 2024
2024 is around the corner and it’s time for CFOs to evaluate their progress in 2023 and look ahead to 2024. The list of priorities feels like it never gets shorter, yet it does evolve over time. In this blog, we give our view on the top 10 priorities for CFOs in 2024.
The starting point should always be an external view of the world. What’s the current situation and what challenges is the economy facing? We’ve been riding a wave of inflation and fast-rising interest rates. The wave is slowly dying down and the question is if we’re facing a recession or if normal growth levels will return.
Political instability seems to be the norm in most regions of the world be it war, superpower tensions, or internal political turmoil, it’s surely not helpful for companies to plan their activities for 2024. Nonetheless, these are the challenges that CFOs must face and together with the management team devise concrete answers to.
This leads us to our list of top 10 priorities for CFOs in 2024.
Let’s also take the opportunity to expand on these priorities.
A deep dive into the priorities
Making a top 10 list is never an exact science and some of these are of course debatable. Still, let’s dig into these and expand on why these made the top 10 list.
Manage the Next Normal
No one, not even the CFO, can predict the future accurately. The only thing we can be certain of is that the world keeps changing and the Next Normals as defined by McKinsey will keep hitting us. That’s why it’s important for CFOs to build agility and resiliency in everything that’s being done in the company.
Strategic leadership
Business models transform at a pace never seen before. Currently, there’s a massive green energy transition happening and the XaaS is hitting more and more industries by the year. That’s why CFOs need to drive the strategy conversation in the company. Help the management team make the right strategic choices. They’ll be worth trillions!
Drive growth
The economy is at a crossroads. Depending on who you ask you might be hit by recession or back-to-normal growth scenarios in 2024. This comes on the back of 1.5 years of cost pressures from inflation and now high-interest rates. Smart CFOs don’t crumble under pressure though but find smart ways of growing through business model transformations, mergers and acquisitions, etc.
Drive debt-levels down
There’s no such thing as free money. Or so we thought. For the past decade, money has been as good as free and debt levels have risen in companies across the world. Now the free lunch is over and it’s time for companies to manage their debt levels again. Re-financing comes at a steep cost hence it is better to free up cash to pay down those loans.
Continue digital transformation with Generative AI
2023 was the year of Generative AI. Many companies have already experimented with different solutions. CFOs have been hesitant to start using them at large though citing concerns over data protection and confidentiality. However, there can be no two ways around experimenting and understanding how it can benefit the company and the finance team. This should continue in 2024 and hopefully, with major software players implementing these tools in their standard solutions, it’ll be easier for CFOs to adopt them.
Tackle ESG reporting
ESG reporting is becoming very real for many companies in 2024 with CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) coming into effect. No more beating around the bush or down-prioritizing these efforts. Now it’s becoming a must, and our data shows that 50% of finance teams oversee ESG reporting. Not only do CFOs need to tackle the reporting requirements but they should also make ESG a part of the strategy conversations.
Close the talent gap
As the world and work are transforming so has the need for capabilities in the finance function. Transactional work has been automated, analytics have tamed Big Data, and business leaders are demanding insights close to real-time to manage the company. The CFO and finance team need to deliver on this upskilling in data and analytics as well as the more human skills of influencing, communication, relationship-building, and self-leadership. And forget about hiring your way to success. There’s a huge scarcity of talent in this space.
Getting on top of data
When we ask finance teams most still cite data as one of their primary issues. They struggle to produce good data that can be used for solid analyses. This problem has been a constant for more than a decade. The question is if the perfect data situation even exists.
Rather than chasing perfect data CFOs should be comfortable with imperfect data and the fact that they’ll often only be 70-80% right. After all, that’s better than not sharing any data at all. Whether CFOs can finally crack their data challenges or settle for less it’s certain that it remains a top priority for CFOs.
Better financial planning
In a volatile world financial planning (and analysis) only increases its importance in companies across the world. Management wants visibility into the future no matter how limited it may be. It’s now a requirement to build machine-learning models that can predict future outcomes accurately leaving FP&A teams more time to interpret the results and conduct action planning.
Improving cross-functional collaboration
Staying on the topic of better financial planning, it should be a priority for CFOs to move to a more Integrated Business Planning setup in 2024. This will not only improve the planning process but also foster much-needed cross-functional collaboration between all teams in the company. If you truly want to beat competition, you cannot work in silos but must come together and act on what’s best for the company overall.
Delivering on these will obviously be a massive challenge and the whole finance team should get involved. It’s also likely that individual CFOs will have to cut the list down to just three to four Must Win Battles for 2024.
