Tipalti, the leading global payables automation platform, today announced the release of a new report that explores CFOs’ priorities, business expectations, and technology investment strategies during these uncertain times.
The report, titled CFOs Heighten Focus on Achieving Efficiencies, is driven by the results of a CFO Dive survey of 153 Finance executives working in a wide range of industries. In addition to uncovering these executives’ challenges and their perspectives on their organizations’ growth prospects for 2023, the report also explores how embracing automation can help CFOs adapt to current and future organizational realities.
For example, Tipalti’s research shows that 76% of finance executives agree that manual tasks still absorb too much of their finance teams’ time and effort. The exact same percentage of finance executives (76%) also agree that the CFO and finance function are expected to do more with less — i.e., fewer resources or smaller budgets — in 2023 compared to 2022.
CFOs are addressing these challenges through technology. When it comes to their technology investment strategies, for example, more than two out of five finance executives (44%) report they are focusing more on achieving new efficiencies. In addition, nearly 70% are currently making or using digital technology investments to pursue finance automation.
While finance automation can mean different things to different CFOs, there are several key areas where finance executives agree that applying digital technology is very important:
- Expenses (67%)
- Tax compliance (66%)
- Automated payments (62%)
- Corporate credit card spend management (61%)
- Purchase order management (58%)
“By automating areas like expenses and payments, CFOs can unburden their teams from many manual tasks while also minimizing their error rate — ultimately reducing the time and effort CFOs themselves need to spend on manual interventions and oversight,” says Paul Henderson, Chief Accounting Officer at Tipalti. “CFOs can reallocate that time and effort to more strategic concerns such as analyzing data and insights and applying them to decisions that drive enterprise value.”
Tipalti’s research shows that the more CFOs focus on driving enterprise value, the more their organizations benefit. Finance executives who report that their organizations will exceed expectations in 2023 are more likely than others to view the CFO role as an enterprise value creator (58%) rather than as a finance and accounting steward (42%).
“CFOs already have their hands full with priorities like managing cash flow and reducing costs, but they are also expected to make decisions and deploy strategies that create value and drive growth for the future of their organizations,” says Sarah Spoja, CFO of Tipalti. “We are confident the insights found in this report will help more CFOs recognize how finance automation can help them prepare for and adapt to that future.”
Read the complete report: CFOs Heighten Focus on Achieving Efficiencies
Tipalti comes from the Hebrew expression for “We handled it.” Tipalti is the only company handling both Global Partner Payments and Accounts Payable workflows for high-velocity companies across the entire financial operations cycle: onboarding and managing global suppliers, instituting procurement controls, streamlining invoice processing and approvals, executing payments around the world and reconciling payables data across a multi-subsidiary finance organization. Tipalti enables companies to scale quickly by making payables strategic with operational, compliance, and financial controls. Companies can efficiently and securely pay thousands of partners and suppliers in 196 countries within minutes. Thousands of companies, such as Amazon Twitch, GoDaddy, Roku, WordPress.com, and ZipRecruiter use Tipalti to reduce operational workload by 80% and accelerate the financial close by 25%, while strengthening financial and spend controls. For more information, visit tipalti.com.