Plum Jobs

  • Home
  • HR Advisory
  • Executive Appointments
  • Current Vacancies
  • Courses
    • Leadership Catalyst
      • Strategic Leadership: Lead Innovation, Profitability & Growth
      • Women in Leadership: Lead with Confidence
      • High Impact Leadership: Accelerate Managerial Effectiveness
      • Transitional Leadership: Step Up Your Career
      • New & Emerging Managers: Be A Great Manager
      • Aspiring Managers
      • Breakthrough for Leaders: Eureka!
      • Business Skills for CEOs & Business Owners
      • Leadership for Professional Services & Consulting Firms
      • The First 100 Days: The Journey Begins
      • CAREER COACHING
      • Career Success
      • Self Assessment & Self Evolution: Know Thy Self
    • HR Leadership
      • Strategic HR Leadership: Align HR Strategy
      • Strategic HR Management: Align People to the Business
      • Recruitment & Talent Succession Planning
      • Organization Design & Workforce Planning
      • Interviewing Skills: Recruit the Best Candidates
      • Managing People: Build & Engage your Team
      • Employee Relations, Disciplinary & Grievance
      • Leadership for High Performance: Boost Productivity
      • Performance Management: Appraisals & Coaching
      • Competencies: Accelerate Productivity & Learning
      • Onboarding & Induction: Welcome Aboard!
      • Learning & Development Strategies & Tools
      • On the Job Coaching & Inhouse Training
    • Business Skills
      • Senior Level Business Development : Connect With CXOs
      • Build & Manage A Winning Sales Team
      • B2B Sales : Art of Winning & Retaining Clients
      • Inside Sales: Convert Opportunities to Revenue
      • Introduction to Sales: Build Your Sales Foundation
      • Business Acumen, Strategy & Execution: A Commercial Focus
      • Change Management: Embrace Change to Succeed
      • Customer Excellence: Deliver A Competitive Advantage
      • Customer Service: Move Customers to Brand Ambassadors
      • Finance for Non Finance Professionals
      • Lead Transformational Change: Create An Agile Organization
      • Strategic Business Planning & Execution
    • Skills to Stand Out
      • Build Your Professional Identity: What is your Brand?
      • Business Networking for Impactful Connections
      • Business Writing Skills: Write It Right
      • Conflict Management: Create a Positive Outcome
      • Create a Lasting Impression
      • Emotional Intelligence: Evolve, Inspire and Lead
      • Facilitation Skills: Lead Group Discussions
      • Goal Setting Skills: Achieve Realistic Outcomes
      • Critical Thinking, Decision Making & Problem Solving
      • Negotiation Skills: Get a Win-Win Outcome
      • Planning & Prioritizing: Every Minute Counts
      • Presentation & Public Speaking: Master your Pitch
      • Resilience Leadership: Adapt to Succeed
  • Insights
  • Contact Us
+971.55.216.7567

Why Organizations Are Struggling with Digital Finance

by Deepa Sud / Monday, 24 August 2020 / Published in Finance

Overcoming The Critical Skills Shortages in Finance

All industries face the same hiring challenges – keeping pace with evolving technology and finding the best talent in a strong job market. The finance and accounting industry is no exception, except that it comes with its own unique set of challenges that organizations and accounting services firms face when they want to become competitive in today’s business world.

With digital transformation prevalent in every industry, accounting and finance roles have perhaps been the most affected with many of the tasks being automated and cloud based. In the past, finance managers oversaw the company’s finance, bookkeepers maintained the books and accountants undertook transactional accounts payables and receivables. Today, these roles have merged and some have become obsolete.

Roles in finance today require more than number crunching – they require the ability to analyze and synthesize large volumes of data in a broader business context of sales, operations, data science and supply chain. These are capabilities that most existing accounting and financial professional do not have.

Most of our clients are facing the brunt of the skills gap and cite recruitment as one of their most critical issues. Whilst there is no shortage of accountants, there is a shortage of financial skills with soft skills such as active listening, problem-solving skills and business skills such as strategic planning, business decision support and the ability to present data to a non-financial people.

There is also a shortage of high calibre middle management candidates with soft skills and emotional intelligence to provide strategic and advisory services.

Aside from a technology disruption, there is a generational disruption that is also occurring. The experienced workforce is mostly an aging population who are retiring or about to retire. The older workforce has not been able to adapt to innovative technologies, blockchain, data analytics and cybersecurity which have affected the industry.

As a result, there is a lack of succession pipelines no matter what the discipline, whether accounting, auditing, tax or advisory.

With the wide age gap between the experienced finance workforce and mainly millennials, there is a disconnect with the older generation lacking technology skills and mindset with the younger generation needing to learn the fundamentals of finance and accounting but have the technology aptitude and mindset. This has led to a lack of learning opportunities for the younger generation entering the field.

Striking a balance is critical – techno-centric vs client centric – where firms are using technology to reduce costs and increase productivity, there is an opportunity to leverage technology to get better at what businesses need most – proactive insight analysis and guidance.

Technology cannot replace judgement and a finger on the pulse of the geopolitical and economic landscape.

Data analytics and visualization is enabling businesses to utilize customer intelligence to predict revenue growth and profitability and given end users access to real-time financial information to improve organization performance, respectively. However, these areas need the right skills to interpret the data and present relevant and insightful analysis which will enable the organisation to innovate.

Moving up the value chain – accounting and finance roles need to change from transactional and compliance to strategic advisory, business transformation and data-driven insights. This requires accounting and finance professional to have a deep understanding of strategy, business process, technology integration and automation to serve their businesses for the future and stay relevant.

The career path of an accountant is in flux as it needs to be redefined to address how an accountant builds their experience with automation eliminating many entry level roles. Although technology will augment their knowledge, their strategic and advisory experience will come from years of experience from working in industry. The question remains, how do they get that experience when they cannot even get an entry role?

As the number of hours of traditional transactional accounting is dramatically reduced, finance leaders need to embrace that value-add services are now mainstream activities which they need to provide as the function evolves. In an advisory capacity, finance professional needs to be able to manage liquidity, control costs and make sound investment decisions.

Finance needs to be far more involved in the strategic direction of the business, providing it with rich data and driving high-level decision making and risk management.

With millennials not viewing longevity as a positive career choice, one way to address the skills shortage is to establish a sustainable talent pipeline with a focus on developing and growing people internally.

Change in the accounting and finance industry are inevitable. It is time for business leaders and HR to rethink strategies and culture for attracting, engaging and retaining a new generation of finance and accounting professionals. Those that are embracing this and applying change management in their firms and organizations will survive whilst those who are fighting change will have a challenge competing and surviving.

Unable to find the right level of skills in accounting and finance?

We specialize in finding the most suitable finance candidates for our clients to build a successful workforce – contact us or call +971 552 167567 to explore how we are helping our clients overcome their recruitment challenges.

SHARE:
Follow by Email
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn
Instagram
Tagged under: Finance, Human Resources, Recruitment & Talent Management

About Deepa Sud

Through a global HR career at Board and senior executive level that spans across multiple FTSE 250 organisations in EMEA, APAC & America, Deepa has a visionary and pragmatic approach with expertise in leading business transformation and turnaround through strategic talent management and leadership development to accelerate long-term growth and sustainability.

Deepa is the founder of Plum Jobs, an HR advisory and executive search consultancy based in Dubai.

Get in touch if you would like to contribute to our insights
+971.55.216.7567

What you can read next

Modern Day CFO vs Traditional Finance Manager – Who is Adding Business Value?

Categories

  • Business Development & Sales
  • Finance
  • Human Resources
  • Leadership
  • Marketing & Customer Experience
  • Procurement & Supply Chain
  • Recruitment & Talent Management
  • Strategy
  • Technology

Recent Posts

  • Customer Experience Excellence Leadership Is No Longer a “Nice to Have” ….. It’s Become A Necessity

  • It’s Time for HR to Raise the Bar to Be More Business and Outcome Driven

  • Successfully Onboard New Employees to Improve Employee Retention

  • Why Having a Sales Recruitment Strategy is Important for Top Performing Salespeople

  • How Does an Organization Successfully Survive Redundancies?

Hello, how can we help you?

Plum Jobs HR Solutions for HR expertise for organizations

HR Advisory

Looking for HR expertise for your organization?

Plum Jobs executive search for the need to hire successful business leaders

Recruitment

Need to recruit high performance talent?

Hiring the right people with Plum Jobs executive search and recruitment

Executive Search

Need to hire successful business leaders?

Leadership & Business Skills

Ready to evolve to a greater level?

Career Coaching

Want to accelerate your career growth?

Plum Jobs HR Solutions for HR expertise for organizations

HR Advisory

Looking for HR expertise?

Plum Jobs executive search for the need to hire successful business leaders

Recruitment

Need high performance talent?

Hiring the right people with Plum Jobs executive search and recruitment

Executive Search

Need a successful business leader?

Leadership & Business Skills

Ready to evolve to a greater level?

Career Coaching

Want to accelerate your career growth?

  • HR Advisory
  • Executive Search
  • Recruitment
  • Coaching
  • Current Vacancies
  • What We Do
  • Why Clients Choose Us
  • Contact Us

©2021 PLUM JOBS

Al Saaha Offices | Burj Khalifa | Souk Al Bahar
PO Box 487177 | Dubai | UAE

+971.55.216.7567

©2021 PLUM JOBS

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

©2021 PLUM JOBS

TOP