In 2020, financial leaders had a full plate of challenges — they were managing business-threatening disruptions and closures along with continuity plans amidst a climate of economic uncertainty. Like their C-suite peers, CFOs played a significant role as internal company leaders when it came to communications, employee experience, and managing a remote workforce.
This year, they are working on issues related to recovery, including return-to-office strategies, shifting or reallocating resources, and technology enhancements. At the same time, CFOs and their teams are charged with driving revenue growth and achieving operational efficiencies.
CFOs from the world’s leading organizations shared their most important 2021 priorities across the business, as well as within their own functional areas. CFOs’ top initiative for the enterprise is achieving efficiencies and improving productivity, the same as cited by CIOs and CISOs.
The priorities of financial leaders currently are very similar to the fall of 2020, the last time we conducted the survey. Interestingly, company culture and staff engagement is the only business issue new to the top five that was not cited by CFOs previously. They also shared their specific goals around improving business processes, as well as the challenges to achieving them.
A top priority for CFOs — data & analytics — is reflected in how they plan to spend their resources this year.
For nearly 20 years, Evanta has gathered insights on our C-level communities’ top priorities, the challenges they face, and the goals they set to add value to the enterprise. This data is invaluable to peer communities, enabling us to highlight trends and develop discussion topics that meet the real-time needs of executives. To join the conversation, find your CFO community.
Based on 100+ CFO responses from Evanta’s proprietary Leadership Perspective Survey, April 2021.
by CFOs, for CFOs
Join the conversation with peers in your local CFO community.