There is a great analogy between Atlas, one of the Titans from Greek mythology and the year 2021, while former bore the burden of heavens on his shoulders, the latter continues to bear inordinate challenges thrown by tumultuous year; 2020. The outbreak of Covid-19 raised a series of unanticipated challenges before businesses with Finance & Accounting outsourcing being no exception. To remain competitive in this in this hyper dynamic environment, businesses really need to focus on delivering against the broader definition of value, impact the top line and bottom line while leveraging the next generation digital tools. Future ready organizations in the new normal will be agile in adapting to changing environments, act with speed through robust decision making, be resilient to any business continuity challenges and digitally enabled as this provides foundation to deliver on all the promises discussed above.
Let’s look at CFO’s view on the business imperatives and critical trends in Finance & Accounting accounting outsourcing that may shape the face of finance in new normal:
Reconsider Outsourcing as cost effective model: The pandemic has forced organizations to reconsider their status quo and push for what is possible. Traditionally, F&As have been reluctant to implement work from home model, however because of the pandemic as any other function CFOs have realized the value of working from home and have it as a part of their permanent delivery model from the business continuity planning. Interestingly this development has given rise to a new trend; businesses are increasingly open to leveraging hybrid operating models in future; partnering with third party service providers.
Finance & Accounting Service Providers to Elevate Their Position as Strategic Business Partner
Finance & Accountingis more mature business area, F&A service providers today can align their value proposition to client’s business objectives and play strategic role by being no longer be just responsible for ongoing operations, but playing critical role in areas such as designing their transformation roadmap and executing those transformations.
Additionally they will support businesses in meeting their current business objectives are; partnering strategically, playing a significant role in shaping finances and accounting operations, incorporating actionable insights using data and analytics as key input for processing, driving process excellence and best practices, providing actionable insights using data and analytics in an output repot and leading the execution of the digital strategy and handling ongoing tech support.
Building a Digital-First Business: Digital-enablement has emerged as a top priority for finance organizations a they look to future-proof their businesses. Digital has become more of table stakes from outsourcing standpoint as digital has become a necessity.
However, the service providers are ahead in terms of their digital investment and have been investing in digital levers for a while, investment in data, artificial intelligence, automation; analytics continue to be top investment themes in recent times as well. We see further improvement as they have increased their investment in process, domain, and talent related expertise to further contextualize the digital investment made to the F&A context .Digital adoption is increasing outsourcing deals and is likely to accelerate further in the next normal.
The year 2021 is expected to become a fruitful year for the F&A outsourcing. Businesses may form their global strategy and consider outsourcing for a faster, robust, scalable, flexible, more competitive and finally a profitable organization.
