ANZ sees one of the lowest responses to those who strongly agree that finance should facilitate collaborative enterprise planning (46% v 57% elsewhere globally).
Compounding this, only a little over a quarter of respondents (28%) strongly agreed that they feel personally empowered to drive strategic decisions across business functions in their organisations, relative to the 45% and 46% who said the same worldwide and in Asia-Pacific, respectively.
This manifests in low levels of collaboration across the business. Fewer ANZ CFOs and their direct reports spend 15 hours or more a month collaborating with other business functions than their peers globally. For instance, a mere 6% of ANZ finance professionals collaborate with management/ strategy for 15 hours or more a month, compared with a global average of 21%.
ANZ sees one of the lowest responses to those who strongly agree that finance should facilitate collaborative enterprise planning (46% v 57% elsewhere globally).
Meanwhile, no ANZ respondents said that they collaborated with sales for 15 hours-plus a month (relative to 11% globally).
Why is collaboration so hard?
For finance executives in ANZ, two of the top three challenges to achieving more and better collaboration with business functions outside finance are technical difficulties with digital systems for remote collaboration and no formal process for information sharing on a periodic basis. It is little wonder then that two of the top three emerging technologies they believe will most enhance collaboration are cloud computing for remote access and real-time information-sharing technologies.
But despite acknowledging the potential of collaborative technologies, finance executives in ANZ are much less likely than their counterparts in Asia-Pacific to anticipate automation within their own function. Roughly a third believe that at least 40% of the role of the CFO will be automated in five to ten years (compared with 54% elsewhere regionally). They fall short of their global and regional counterparts too in their understanding of the strategic opportunities available to them should automation free up a considerable amount of time for the finance function. They were also much less likely than those elsewhere in Asia-Pacific to create a taskforce to focus on strategic projects if their team’s time freed up as a result of automation.
Finance professionals in Australia and New Zealand were least likely to be interested in identifying more strategic investment opportunities (24% v 37% elsewhere globally) if automation freed up 30 50% of their time. They were least likely to be interested in identifying more strategic investment opportunities (24% v 37% elsewhere globally) if automation freed up 30-50% of their time.
What lies ahead: opportunities to steer
These responses notwithstanding, finance professionals in Australia and New Zealand seem to possess a clear perspective on what it would take for finance to steer the organisation through more collaboration, focusing on marketing and sales strategy development and supply-chain strategy development.
With marketing and sales, a little over half of ANZ’s finance professionals want more involvement in customer retention strategies and in assessing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and tools/measuring marketing return on investment. As for procurement and supply chain, the top area for greater involvement is vendor selection/ procurement assessment strategies.
CFOs and their direct reports in ANZ also have clear aspirations for areas in which they could play a larger role beyond marketing, sales and procurement and supply chain. When it comes to HR, they would like more involvement in determining office space requirements and design and employee productivity analysis.
Across the business, to achieve integrated risk management, finance executives wish to collaborate most on managing cyber-threats and data privacy and providing a consolidated view of risk and potential impact on business objectives.
Within operations, they would like to focus on facilitating digitalisation of processes and guiding regional management on labour management policies and legal requirements.
Across the business, to achieve integrated risk management, finance executives wish to collaborate most on managing cyber-threats and data privacy and providing a consolidated view of risk and potential impact on business objectives.
To prepare for this level of engagement, CFOs and their direct reports in ANZ recognise that future finance executives will need to possess a strong understanding of business strategy and operations. But only when they fully embrace their mandate to steer the business and drive operational decisions through collaboration will the real benefits emerge: a deeper understanding of business dynamics for better strategic investment planning and higher financial performance.
