It Pays to Develop a World-Class Back Office
According to Hackett Group research, as reported by cfo.com, finance operations have experienced increased costs of up to 7.5%. At the same time, companies considered to be in the top quartile in terms of operational efficiency witnessed a cost decrease of 1.3%.
The cfo.com article provides more insight into the wide disparity between well-run and poorly-run back office operations:
How could the world-class group beat inflation and rising wages to keep costs down? For one, most finance organizations employed more staff in 2023, while digital world-class finance organizations reduced staff by 7%.
There has been a competing ideology for a while now of CFOs who embrace and invest in modern technology to allow their teams to become more automated and digital while another category of CFO simply does not believe in the value provided by technology. The latter CFO class opts to save short-term cash by minimizing technology transformation projects and increasing the staff size to keep pace.