Finance Superheroes leverage the OneEcosystem mindset to vault ahead of the competition

Nearly 90% of finance executives agree that driving growth for the enterprise is the raison d’être for the modern finance function beyond cost reduction and compliance. Yet, our research reveals that only 12% of finance organizations have realized their ambitions around cost, control, business outcomes, and influence. What are these finance Superheroes doing differently?

To find out, HFS Research, in partnership with Cognizant, surveyed 411 senior finance leaders across the Global 2000. Our study reveals that a “OneEcosystem” mindset shapes finance Superheroes.

HFS defines the OneEcosystem as a mindset where connected customer, employee, and partner experiences create new thresholds of value.

Finance Superheroes need to defeat internal organizational silos to become more tightly integrated with procurement, supply chain, CRM, and enterprise performance planning. They need to slay legacy technology and embrace new technologies. Superheroes invest in building future-ready skillsets internally and leveraging a network of external partners. And they use data as their superpower.

Key findings

1. While the promise of digital-led finance transformation is real, nearly 80% of finance and accounting (F&A) organizations have struggled to fully embrace and embed emerging technologies within core processes. 
2. A lack of data quality, a lack of proper skills, and cultural inertia are the top three inhibitors for finance organizations.
3. There is dissonance between C-level finance executives and middle management. C-level executives blame their organization’s reticence for changing as the #1 challenge, while middle management blames the lack of C-level support as an inhibitor.
4. Less than 20% of finance organizations have been able to scale up investments in emerging technologies such as RPA (robotic process automation), ML (machine learning), process mining, and digital assistants; the exception is analytics, which approximately 65% of organizations are implementing at scale. 

Nearly 90% of finance executives want to be enablers for enterprise growth beyond cost reduction and compliance but only 12% of finance organizations emerge as Superheroes 

We segmented the 411  respondents into three categories:

1. Superheroes were top-quartile performers with a score of 4-5 across all four dimensions on a scale of 1-5. They have low operational costs and robust compliance; they also drive strong business impact (e.g., working capital, Daily Sales Outstanding) and play the crucial role of a strategic business adviser to drive growth for the enterprise.
2. Sidekicks aspire to be Superheroes but have middling scores across all assessment dimensions.
3. The Aspirants were bottom-quartile performers with below-average scores across all dimensions. The Aspirants have bold ambitions but are still searching for ways to drive down costs and create a business impact.