The new year is around the corner. What’re your 2024 predictions for finance and accounting?
BlackLine said there are several major trends when releasing its 2024 predictions for finance and accounting.
According to Nikhil Parambath, Regional Vice-President, Asia, BlackLine, the company’s 2024 predictions for finance and accounting are as follows.
More finance and accounting functions to invest in technology to compensate for talent shortage
From challenges in the global supply chain to evolving regulations, the rapid pace of industry developments has placed an almost unreasonable burden on accounting departments.
Finance and accounting (F&A) teams face increasing pressure to close their books faster, improve financial planning and analysis, and strengthen financial agility.
Without the right talent, they may struggle to fulfil their potential as a strategic partner to help organizations meet changing market opportunities.
However, organisations are facing challenges hiring and retaining F&A talent.
According to a recent study led by the Institute of Management Accountants and the ASEAN Federation of Accountants, 27% of F&A professionals surveyed intend to leave their current employer in the next 12 months, while one in ten respondents expect to leave the profession.
As F&A departments leverage new technologies, this will help to remove inefficient, manual processes and allow teams to focus on higher-value tasks.
The work of accountants will become more strategically important and highly collaborative. In the long run, this can help to shape perceptions of the profession to be seen as meaningful and interesting, and encourage more people to consider accountancy as a career.
F&A pros fluent in the use of insights from emerging data, analytics, and AI modeling tech will be key to an organisation’s resilience
The most successful F&A professionals in 2024 will possess skill sets beyond pure accounting to include abilities to interpret and act on insights provided by comprehensive business intelligence and AI tools.
Currently, automation software is already known for its potential to complete manual, repetitive tasks.
With the rise of AI, this presents even more possibilities to help F&A teams become more efficient—for instance, through predictive guidance on high-risk transactions and AI-assisted financial forecasting.
What sets the modern F&A talent apart will be their ability to fully leverage digital tools to uncover financial insights, and align these findings with business strategy in real-time to drive the business forward.
Rather than a department focusing solely on organising the business’ financial statements, F&A team members will shift towards a more analytical, collaborative role, helping various functions of the organization from sales to IT seize opportunities and evade disruptions.
They could also be positioned as internal strategic advisers to their commercial function colleagues on a project-by-project basis, validating the assumptions generated in AI models.
The CFO will become an enabler of corporate performance
As accounting software becomes more sophisticated and intelligent, the role of the CFO is more important than ever to transform the F&A function in order to stay ahead of the curve.
To help teams stay up to date with the latest tech developments, the CFO could set advisory guidelines, encourage team members to pick up relevant tech skills and work with the CTO to ensure the smooth integration of AI and automation.
Finance teams will become more involved in decision-making across operations, ensuring business functions have accurate and up-to-date information to achieve the CEO’s vision. The Office of the CFO will increasingly be involved in operations, bridging the strategy gap between finance and the business.
