The Crisis of Competency in Accounting and Finance

The roles of today’s accounting professionals are being reinvented, requiring new skills far beyond audit, tax and compliance competencies.

The finance function is a key part of business strategy, but many professionals don’t learn the skills needed to develop strategy, inform decision making, or communicate with influence. “Accountant” remains one of the hardest jobs for employers to fill, and 50 percent of finance executives can’t find staff with the right skills. This talent gap is, in fact, a crisis.

This “Competency Crisis” has gone unsolved for decades, and it’s affecting businesses’ operations potential for future growth. The problem has been studied at length by academics and professional accounting organizations. A variety of factors, including a narrowly focused accounting curriculum and lack of on-the-job training, are part of the problem, but clearly, there is no silver bullet that will make accounting and finance professionals excel at a global level.

Finance Transformation: Five Mistakes to Avoid

Even the most high-performing finance teams occasionally slip up – especially when trying to transform the way their department operates. Only 12% of finance leaders responding to a recent survey said their transformation projects achieved all of their intended business outcomes.

Through our research into finance transformation, we’ve identified five common mistakes many CFOs make:

Budget Gem 2: Link Budgets To Operational Activities.

I’m always amazed at how tenuous the link is between strategic goals and budgets. Most senior managers will claim that the budget process is there to help the organisation implement strategy, and yet when you look at the submission sheets budget holders are asked to complete, there is no link. Sure, the revenues and costs when accumulated with other departments may equate to a strategic target, but budgeting is much more than this. After all we can get a monkey to fill in those sheets and even get them approved by ensuring they line up with targets set by senior managers. But we all know that the numbers themselves are meaningless unless they have been placed in context of organisational activities.

Don’t Set and Forget Your Budget

Starting your own business is both an exciting and nerve-racking adventure, I’ve been there. Just a few weeks ago I was fortunate to meet with a bunch of people at the cusp of starting their own businesses.

At the event I ran by PushStart, I was able to share my experiences and the virtues of accounting software with these young entrepreneurs.

It’s clear that not everyone who starts a business has the same level of accounting knowledge. For some the idea of managing numbers is overwhelming, while for others they may have studied accounting at university. But I truly don’t think it matters. New online accounting solutions are making managing your own finances simpler, but even traditional desktop type products are really quite easy once you’ve had some training. In this article I’ll cover off a few of the things I shared at the PushStart event.

Why Does Size Matter When It Comes To Financial Accounting Technology?

Determining what kind of financial accounting technology solution a business needs is often a matter of asking one simple question: How big is the company?

Different-size organizations have different needs. Small companies, where the owner is master chef and chief dishwasher, typically need a system that allows them to do more cooking and less washing. Medium-size organizations need a system where financial applications are integrated with operational applications and the controls that come with that. Meanwhile, large enterprises need a full scope enterprise resource management system that enables data to remain consistent between departments.

Seven Essential Qualities of FP&A

Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) teams are responsible for testing the viability of big ideas coming out of the C-suite. These professionals are being asked to understand key business drivers and perform predictive analysis. To enable innovation and smart decisions, they must focus on modeling and predicting options for resource allocation, growth investments, and risk management. Advanced financial analysts are already building, testing, and perfecting collaboration tools that enable scenario planning and what-if analysis that focus on forward-looking choices. So, what does it take to excel as an FP&A professional?

How Can Advanced Financial Management Systems Make You A More Strategic CFO?

For decades, financial managers have pieced together and manipulated spreadsheets in order to report on past data and maintain the financial integrity of their businesses. Sure, if they had time, they could use these primitive tools to attempt to identify trends and offer insights. But this effort was ridden with information silos, dirty data and…

Some Accountants are the Blind Leading the Blind

I recently met a managerial consultant whose intentions were sincere, however his advice was surprising, but not totally surprising, to me. He mentioned to me that a company had inquired to him whether they should consider using activity-based costing (ABC). His next step was initially encouraging. He contacted the accounting departments of the inquiring company’s…

Communicating with Numbers: The Most Critical Skill for Finance Pros?

Assuming we gather, interpret, and understand financial information, the manner in which we communicate this information will impact how we are perceived within our organizations, and the extent to which executives and operational leaders will take action based on your work.

FP&R, or, How We Kicked The Spreadsheet Habit

Are you missing the “A” in your FP&A (financial planning and analysis)? Maybe missing some of the “P” as well? Are you and your department getting a bit tired of the “FR” gig you seem to have landed?