Hackett Research Alert: The Finance Challenge for 2015 & Beyond; Improve Analytics & Agility Through Digital Transformation W...
April 09 2015 - 9:30AM
Business Wire
As companies face significant issues related to improving
enterprise agility and address continued volatility business
conditions in 2015, corporate finance organizations are handicapped
in their ability to support this enterprise agility objective by
cost pressure and their inability to deliver in two critical areas
– business partnering and reporting and analysis, according to the
newly-released Finance Key Issues research from The Hackett Group,
Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT).
“Like the recent oil price collapse that few companies saw
coming, in 2015 the next disruptive event is always just over the
horizon,” said The Hackett Group Principal and Global Finance
Executive Advisory Practice Leader Jim O’Connor. “Economic and
political volatility remain high, and the drive to improve
enterprise agility and innovation is greater than ever before.
Finance has to be able to play a key role in helping their
companies identify opportunities and respond to unforeseen events.
Unfortunately, the capability gaps we’ve identified in this year’s
key issues study make it very difficult for finance to do this. And
after years of cost-cutting, improving finance performance is a
tremendous challenge.”
The Hackett Group’s study finds that in an environment of
increasing political and economic uncertainty, companies are
striving to improve agility and find new ways to innovate. In
response, the top priority of finance executives was quite clear –
more than 75% stated their highest priority was supporting the
execution of the company’s strategy, which include growth and
innovation for 2015.
Unfortunately, most finance organizations will have to realize
this strategy without net new funding. On average, most finance
functions will see both headcount and budget trimmed marginally in
2015, with both areas seeing reductions of less than one percent,
according to The Hackett Group’s study. These results point to a
challenging reality in 2015, namely that finance organizations must
pursue dual objectives – relentlessly pursuing a more competitive
cost structure while simultaneously pursuing a strategic
transformation agenda. The two are tightly intertwined – driving
down cost will allow finance to self-fund the building of critical
capabilities such as improved decision-making, formulating
strategy, and managing enterprise risk.
In addition, this year’s study finds that the two capabilities
identified as most critical to achievement of their 2015 strategic
imperatives -- building better partnerships and improving
analytics, modeling and reporting capabilities -- were also
identified as areas where finance capability is extremely low. The
study also finds similar capability gaps in two other key
development areas – the ability to redeploy capacity to value
creation and align talent and skills to achieve enterprise
goals.
The Hackett Group’s research finds that companies today are
experiencing increasing risk in many key areas, including
intensified competition, commodity price volatility and supply of
critical talent. But in most cases, finance organizations simply do
not have fully-developed risk management plans or forecasting
capabilities in place to better deal with these unforeseen
events.
Overall, risk management capabilities are also extremely
immature in finance, according to The Hackett Group’s research.
Less than 40 percent of all companies actually have a chief risk
officer in place, and only half have a dedicated risk management
team within finance. A full 20 percent of all companies do not have
these structures or others in place for monitoring and managing
risk, such as an enterprise risk management team or
cross-functional risk management council.
The Hackett Group’s study finds that to address the issues they
are facing, finance organizations continue to turn to proven best
practices, including process simplification, global
standardization, and use of global business services or shared
services operations. Furthermore, organizations continue to
innovate beyond the current best practices, identify as their top
priorities enhanced planning and performance management, providing
the capability to better manage risks, anticipate future events,
reduce costs and support strategy. Study participants highlighted
technology as a major performance improvement lever. Finance
digital transformation strategies include: employing technology to
streamline processes (transactional automation and going paperless
through digitization); developing real-time analytics capabilities
and supporting big data initiatives; mobile enablement of finance
applications; and extending or replacing finance applications with
cloud-based technology.
The Hackett Group’s new study, “Finance Key Issues in 2015:
Prioritizing Competing Agendas to Deliver Value and Agility,” is
based on research conducted with executives from over 170 large
companies in the US and abroad, most with annual revenue of $1
billion or greater. A complimentary version of the research is
available with registration at this link:
http://www.thehackettgroup.com/research/2015/pr/keyissuesfn15/
About The Hackett Group
The Hackett Group (NASDAQ: HCKT), a global strategic business
advisory and operations improvement consulting firm, is a leader in
best practice advisory, business benchmarking, and transformation
consulting services including strategy and operations, enterprise
performance management, working capital management, and global
business services advice.
Utilizing best practices and implementation insights from more
than 11,000 benchmarking studies, executives use The Hackett
Group's empirically-based approach to quickly define and implement
initiatives that enable world-class performance. Through its REL
group, The Hackett Group offers working capital solutions focused
on delivering significant cash flow improvements. Through its
Strategy & Operations practice, The Hackett Group offers
consulting services in the Consumer and Industrial Products,
Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing, and Financial Services industry
sectors. Through its Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)
Solutions group, The Hackett Group offers business and application
consulting and application maintenance services that help maximize
returns on IT investments. The Hackett Group has completed
benchmark studies with over 5,000 major corporations and government
agencies, including 93% of the Dow Jones Industrials, 86% of the
Fortune 100, 87% of the DAX 30 and 51% of the FTSE 100.
More information on The Hackett Group is available: by phone at
(770) 225-3600; by e-mail at info@thehackettgroup.com.
The Hackett Group, Inc.Gary Baker, 917-796-2391Global
Communications Directorgbaker@thehackettgroup.com
Hackett (NASDAQ:HCKT)
Historical Stock Chart
From Jun 2024 to Jul 2024
Hackett (NASDAQ:HCKT)
Historical Stock Chart
From Jul 2023 to Jul 2024