The ‘Leadership in a new era: how finance and IT leaders are guiding post-pandemic strategy’ global survey of 500 companies, including 70 Australian organisations, reports that finance and IT functions will play a leading role in fixing organisational inefficiencies identified during the pandemic. The survey was commissioned by SAP Concur and conducted by Oxford Economics to determine the challenges and opportunities for organisations in the post-pandemic world.
According to the survey, geographic isolation helped Australian businesses keep the negative business impacts of COVID-19 to a minimum compared to other countries; however, finance and IT leaders were forced to make decisions about how they would conduct business in the new digital environment.
Nearly two-thirds (61 per cent) of Australian finance and IT leaders expected to play a greater part in setting the overall company strategy moving forward, the most of any country included in the global survey, and nearly half (46 per cent) said they were already doing so.
However, finance and IT decision-makers must deepen their collaboration: while 57 per cent said the two functions collaborated well together, just 38 per cent of Australian finance leaders said they had a unified strategy with IT to support business expansion.
Matt Goss, senior vice president and general manager, SAP Concur Asia Pacific Japan said, “Strong collaboration across functions, especially between finance and IT, will be critical to businesses under newly crafted operating models. This includes a laser focus on improving efficiencies and removing the duplication of processes and administrative bottlenecks. Organisations that do this will be better equipped to handle unforeseen challenges, while others risk falling further behind.”
Unfortunately, working across functions remains a significant hurdle for many organisations, with 46 per cent of Australian companies acknowledging that different parts of their business tend to be siloed, compared to 35 per cent in other countries. This may remain a challenge for Australian businesses considering 41 per cent believed it was a top obstacle to meeting functional goals. It does also provide an opportunity for finance and IT leaders to lead by example and break down organisational siloes.
The survey also highlighted that the pandemic and its aftereffects continue to present challenges, with Australian finance and IT leaders saying many aspects of their day-to-day jobs had become harder. Nearly three-quarters (71 per cent) said financial planning and analysis were more difficult, along with employee compliance with expense policies (64 per cent), and compliance with tax and employment regulations (57 per cent).
Matt Goss said, “Looking ahead to 2023, Australian decision-makers have set functional goals of increasing efficiency and digitising processes. Their organisational goals are focused on increasing market share as well as improving productivity.