In the first quarter of 2022, studioID of Industry Dive, in partnership with HighRadius, conducted a survey of more than 150 midmarket finance leaders to determine the issues that would dominate the agendas of chief financial officers in 2022.

• Over 40% of the respondents said they remained concerned that COVID-19 shutdowns would challenge their ability to achieve 2022 goals.
• Rising input prices (35.9%) and attracting and retaining talent (32.2%) were the other top risk factors.
• For a majority of the companies (56.4%), optimizing costs was the top-most priority. Other top priorities for midmarket CFOs included data-driven decision-making (44.3%), reducing risk (43.9%), finance team restructuring (39.9%) and liquidity management (37.8%).

“The results accurately mirror the economic forces at work in 2022,” said Ramona Dzinkowski, studioID of Industry Dive Research Economist and author of the survey. “Companies are struggling to find talent post-COVID-19, and shipping issues that aren’t yet resolved continue to drive up costs. Meanwhile, companies that haven’t updated their technology stacks are seeing a negative impact on efficiency and are finding it difficult to onboard new customers or process their invoices.”

“Remote and hybrid working has also created a new level of complexity for CFOs,” explained Morris Kupfer, Vice President of Finance at HighRadius. Among businesses, 52.6% expect their finance and accounting teams to work either remotely or in a hybrid model in 2022. CFOs have to make remote work part of their talent attraction and retention package for accounting teams to tackle attrition challenges, Kupfer noted. “The key, however,” he added, “is making sure the company has made the right technology investment to allow for that. It’s not really optional anymore.”

• Eighty-six percent of the finance executives said accounts receivable automation helped them stay ahead of the competition and saved costs significantly.
• One out of four respondents said they feared that falling behind the AR automation curve would hamper their ability to scale operations.

According to Kiran Rana, General Manager of Mid-markets at HighRadius, adding technology tools to AR is the most cost-effective way to close the skills gap in 2022.  In 2022, companies plan to apply automation to improve efficiency.

• Roughly one-third (32.7%) said they would automate their invoicing, cash application and reconciliation, and collections.
• AR automation helped companies improve working capital management (44.1%) and got more transparency into cash flows (43.4%).
• Over one-third (34.9%) of the businesses said they believed AR automation also helped them accept digital payments, reduce errors and optimize AR staff capacity. 

CFOs are more optimistic about their revenue growth in 2022 vis-a-vis 2021, and AR automation plans figure prominently in their agenda to scale operations to support this growth.

Research Methodology

In the first quarter of 2022, studioID of Industry Dive, in Partnership with HighRadius surveyed senior finance executives to determine the issues that would dominate their agendas in 2022. More specifically, we asked 154 finance leaders in the industry what their top objectives would be in the coming year, what significant threats were on the horizon and how they intended to meet their goals while minimizing those risks.

The most significant number of respondents were CFOs (67), followed by Directors of Finance (45), Vice Presidents of Finance (23), and Chief Accounting Officers (19). Responses were distributed relatively evenly across twenty industry groups. The largest group of respondents were from companies with revenues less than USD 100 million (44.8%), followed by 39% that came from companies with revenues between USD 100 million and 500 million. Approximately 16% represented companies with USD 500 million to 1 billion revenues.