Oracle Global CFO Study 2010

Even in the best of times, CFOs have several challenges to deal with. In recent past, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance put a huge strain on the CFO community. Move to IFRS brought about another challenge. And then the economic crisis hit placing several additional, sometimes opposing (or counter-acting) demands on the CFO.

Almost immediately, CFOs had to get their arms around the direct fallouts from the crisis. Many CFOs were challenged with keeping their companies’ finances moving when their long-standing banking partners were failing or at risk of failing. Others had to manage liquidity in an environment where easy money dried up almost overnight.

As the crisis progressed, CFOs had to look through their crystal balls to forecast the impact of the recession on their financial statements. Several CFOs had to wield the axe again – working with senior management team to ruthlessly cut costs to make the business survive. On the other hand, a few CFOs were challenged with planning for a rapid recovery in the emerging markets, while managing sluggish business conditions in the large western economies.

So how are CFOs managing and addressing these challenges? What approach and actions are they taking?

Oracle conducted an in-person global CFO survey in November 2009 to understand how CFOs were managing their challenges. Here are some insights from the results:

Priorities

• 82% of the CFOs agreed that improving financial visibility and providing better decision-making support to the business was their TOP priority
• 65% of the CFOs reported that helping manage business uncertainties better was their key priority

Key Impediments

• However, 71% CFOs reported an inability to model financial information contained in different databases to see patterns, and gain the required level of visibility
• 59% of the CFOs feel that the finance function still requires too much manual handling and rework of information

Actions Underway

• 82% of the CFOs are significantly enhancing their budgeting process
• An equally high (82%) of the CFOs are streamlining and/or re-engineering the finance process across the organization
• Further, 76% of the CFOs are working to integrate the operational information with the financial information

As a CFO or a senior Finance professional, are you facing similar challenges? Are you interested in finding out further details of how your peers are addressing these challenges? If so, please complete the following online survey. The survey will take no more than 5-10 minutes to complete. The results of the survey will be anonymous.

Upon completion of the survey, we will provide you a summary of results from our global CFO survey that can help you compare your priorities, impediments and actions to those of your global peers.