To Deliver Greater Value, CFOs Must Aggressively Upskill Their Teams

Written By: Bill Marchionni, Account-to-Report Advisory Global Program Leader, The Hackett Group

Today’s business leaders face enormous challenges: the global economy is increasingly more complex as competition intensifies, the uncertainty around geopolitical events persists and the technological revolution continues. The challenges that CFOs face, and the decisions they must make, are significantly different from just a few years ago. As such, CFOs must infuse their organizations with enhanced capabilities and skills. This is a critical mission.

CFOs are integral to business growth and success. They are making strategic bets.

According to The Hackett Group’s® 2025 Finance Agenda and Key Issues Study, CFOs anticipate that their finance organization’s workloads will increase 4.1% (on top of a 5% increase in 2024). The increased workload is the result of (1) Finance assuming ownership of processes and tasks previously owned outside of Finance, (2) Finance performing activities new to the enterprise, and (3) additional regulatory requirements.

CFOs are responding with a shift to digital and an up-skilling of staff. This shift to digital technology continues, with finance technology investment levels mirroring expected revenue growth. CFOs are not adding headcount or increasing operating budgets.

The strategic bet that CFOs have made is that they will be able to leverage digitization, AI, and GenAI, to achieve new levels of operational excellence. From there, they will upskill staff to support a model aligned for sophisticated business partnering.

Knowledge and interaction work types will predominate.

According to The Hackett Group’s® 2025 Record-to-Report Talent Poll, 52% of a record-to-report organization’s workload is Structured Work (i.e., predictable tasks and timing). This is changing. Dramatically. In 3 years, Structured Work is expected to be only 40% of the team’s workload. Knowledge (e.g., analysis, analytics) and Interaction (e.g., business partnering) Work will be 60%. The team will be using their brains…understanding the business…interacting as business partners. In short, 60% of what ‘accountants” will be doing will not fall into the stereotypical vision of the Day in The Life
of an Accountant. This is good news from a recruiting and retention perspective. And it impacts talent development and management.

The Top 10 Finance and Accounting competencies are different from what they once were.

Finance and Accounting organizations and professionals need capabilities and skills across dimensions (alphabetical order):

CFOs see gaps in their Finance and Accounting capabilities.

The Top 3 talent gaps that CFOs see when comparing future needs with current capabilities are:

• Business Skills
• Interpersonal Skills
• Technology, Information and Analysis

Additionally, significant gaps between future needs and current capabilities were identified in the following areas:

• Streamlining and Improving Processes
• Impact & Influence
• Finance Process Knowledge
• Identifying Opportunities
• Data Analytics

Behavioral skills are important. Very important.

CFOs and Finance organizations will need to partner across the enterprise on increasingly more complex business issues and challenges. In addition to having bullet-proof analytical and domain skills and expertise, they must have a bundle of behavioral skills (alphabetical order):

Capacity must be freed up to drive innovation.

Innovation is important, particularly in these times of increasing workloads and capacity constraints.

On average, 26% of a Record-to-Report organization’s time is spent on innovative projects and activities; however, wide variation exists. On the low end, only 10% of time is spent on innovation. These organizations are struggling with driving change. They are treading water.

On the high end, organizations spend 50% of their Record-to-Report time on innovation. They are digitizing…looking at the new technologies… innovating. These organizations are differentiating and leading.

The technological revolution continues.

AI and GenAI are impacting the Finance organization’s mission, structure and needed skills. Finance leaders must:

• Focus on ethical use and change management; on how AI’s adoption reshapes work and the workforce.
• Reshape employee development programs to support a AI-driven work and workforce changes.
• Prioritize reskilling talent on how to apply and work alongside AI, starting with key contributors in domain and process areas that have substantial tacit knowledge of how work gets done
• Prioritize upskilling talent, leveraging advances in available Gen AI training, and mitigate talent acquisition challenges with in-demand data science, data engineering, ML engineering and prompt-engineering roles

Final thoughts. Upskilling is mandatory.

CFOs have made a strategic decision to invest in technology to drive superior operational excellence, and to upskill to meet the enterprise’s strategic goals and business partnering needs. In this context, upskilling is non-negotiable:

• Skills Fulfilment and Training: Develop and implement a comprehensive internal training program to enhance behavioral and technology skills and knowledge.
• Skills Level Assessments: Conduct regular skills assessments to identify gaps and create personalized development plans for targeted skill enhancement.
• Work Nature: Promote Knowledge and Interaction Work by encouraging collaborative projects and cross-functional teams.
• Innovation and Continuous Improvement: Dedicate time for innovative projects