Moving the finance team to the future.

• Author: Culp, Steve
• Position: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT - Accenture Ltd. - Industry overview

The challenges confronting finance professionals in today's global business environment are intense and diverse. Thus, it's imperative that finance teams have the skills, resources and management processes required to achieve high levels of performance to help their enterprises achieve their business objectives.

Yet, Finance organizations and their leaders are challenged by a scarcity of talented professionals at a time when there is increasing complexity in the finance role, coupled with a strong demand for finance skills across the marketplace.

Among the drivers for the surge in demand are: heightened levels and depth of analytics required by business leaders; complexity of operating models across broader geographies and diverse customer sets; and compliance requirements resulting from increased levels of regulations in many geographies and industries.

A recent study conducted by global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company Accenture of more than 350 global finance executives found that globalization is both an opportunity and a challenge as it relates to finance skills. Globalization provides the opportunity to access new skills in new markets, but also brings new challenges, given the diversity of local requirements and new competitors for the limited talent pool.

Indeed, the speed of global market changes, the volatility imposed by having to account for revenues and expenditures in multiple currencies, multiple electronic exchanges--plus the sheer complexity of operating on a global scale in countries or regions of varying degrees of development--are placing extraordinary demands on the finance organizations of enterprises.

Further, finance teams are increasingly called upon to take a more active leadership role in helping their enterprises generate value. This is expected, even as Finance is also required to continue to ensure appropriate levels of control and typically reduce actual costs year over year.

Attaining the right talent to enable the finance team to meet these business requirements is a significant challenge, and one that executives view as a problem now and in the foreseeable future. Besides the scarcity of skilled workers, research found that although companies want to improve their Finance department's performance, workforces frequently lack the focus to develop the capabilities required to achieve high performance.

For instance, although finance executives say a regular dialogue between...