By Tim Hird, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Optimization, Robert Half and Protiviti
Chief financial officers (CFOs) are under more pressure than ever to help their companies anticipate and respond to changes in business and technology environments, drive strategic growth, and maintain robust financial health. They’re not doing all that alone, of course — they rely heavily on their teams.
But even the most experienced finance organizations need additional support at times, especially when skilled finance and accounting talent is hard to find in the labor market.
Using alternative labor models is one solution. A flexible, scalable talent model that includes the strategic use of consulting solutions can help CFOs and their teams navigate today’s challenges — and become more future-ready as well.
Alternative labor models allow you to supplement your permanent staff for as long as needed with contract professionals and consultants. Depending on your needs, you might also tap third-party resources for additional support and expertise. This staffing strategy allows you to access specialized skills, keep projects moving forward and offload work from your core team members.
Alternative labor models are not new, but many employers are finding them increasingly more valuable as they seek to stay agile in today’s rapidly changing business and technological landscape.
In his 1989 book, “The Age of Unreason,” organizational behavior and management expert Charles Handy introduced the concept of the “shamrock organization.” He outlined a framework for organizing the workforce of the future into three categories (like the three “leaves” of a shamrock): a “professional core” of full-time employees, a “flexible labor force” to temporarily address peaks in staffing needs, and a “contractual fringe” that consists of resources the business uses by contracting with other organizations to provide additional capabilities.
Handy asserted that organizing the workforce in this way allows businesses to better position themselves to hire, develop and manage each labor pool optimally, and to understand and harness technology’s role in simultaneously supporting, challenging and shaping each labor pool.
Human resources (HR), leadership development and recruiting functions are evolving rapidly in many firms and becoming even more crucial to fostering a culture of continuous learning and development that supports the future of work. These functions all play a role in helping employees adapt to changing market conditions and technological advancements and increasing overall business resilience.
Finance leaders may not immediately think of an alternative labor model as a solution for advancing and supporting change in these key areas. However, providers of consulting solutions for finance and accounting and other critical business functions excel at change management and transformation. They can enable future-focused talent management by helping to:
Equip businesses with HR technology and analytics: Consultants can help implement HR platforms that integrate analytics, giving CFOs and other stakeholders insight into workforce trends, employee performance and engagement, and more.
Design and deploy leadership programs: Consultants with deep experience in leadership development can craft and implement programs that help the business cultivate the skills needed for future leaders. These programs are foundational for creating a strong leadership pipeline and enabling well-structured succession planning.
Increase efficiency in talent recruitment: Many CFOs today work closely with the CEO and HR leadership to shape and guide their company’s talent development initiatives. They can add even more value to these efforts by aligning skilled resources to help streamline the recruiting process. By using technology that automates tasks related to candidate sourcing, screening and onboarding, consultants can help businesses reduce the time to hire, and also improve their ability to attract top talent.
To understand the value that a scalable talent model can bring specifically to a finance organization, consider how they can help CFOs accomplish many of the top finance priorities they have been working toward this year. Here are five of those top priorities, based on findings in Protiviti’s* latest Global Finance Trends Survey report. (Note: Many of the priorities discussed below align with the strategic priorities for finance and accounting leaders outlined in Robert Half’s Demand for Skilled Talent report.)
Process improvement initiatives are vital to creating a more efficient, agile, innovation-focused and future-ready finance organization. And this is one area where CFOs often look to consulting solutions to gain an objective eye, along with best practices and robust tools to help drive change.
Experienced consultants can take the lead on streamlining operations and reducing waste in the finance function. They can analyze the effectiveness of existing processes to identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks, and then implement optimized workflows that enhance productivity and reduce costs.
They can also integrate automation and other technologies to reduce manual effort in the finance function — and the potential for errors. Importantly, they can use leading frameworks to set the stage for continuous process improvement, enhancing the quality of products and services that the finance organization, and the broader business, delivers to customers.
BP&A, which includes budgeting, forecasting and financial modeling, is at the heart of a CFO’s responsibilities. This set of processes is so critical to the decision-making of many businesses today that they need dedicated teams to focus on an almost-constant analysis of data and trends.
However, because BP&A talent is in such high demand by businesses of all sizes, hiring employees with this skill set can be tough. Plus, if a business wants to maximize BP&A processes to the fullest, it also needs to invest in leading-edge technology and stay on top of best practices and new ideas in the space.
One key benefit of using consulting solutions for BP&A is gaining access to all of the above, including specialized tools and platforms that help streamline processes. Consultants well-versed in using those tools can help the finance function automate data collection, consolidation and analysis to generate more accurate and timely financial reports. With advanced modeling tools, they can also perform what-if scenarios, stress testing and sensitivity analysis to enable robust strategic planning.
BP&A supports the future of work by fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making in the finance function. This not only enhances organizational agility but also empowers employees at all levels to contribute to strategic initiatives. And by strategic partnering on operational activities like BP&A, CFOs can free up their core staff to focus on other top priorities and initiatives.
Finance organizations, by nature, are data-driven. But what it means to be “data-driven” has evolved significantly in recent years with the advent of AI and advanced analytics tools like predictive analytics. Finance leaders and their teams must be able to extract actionable insights efficiently from vast and ever-growing amounts of structured and unstructured data to uncover patterns, trends, risks and opportunities and help drive informed and timely financial and business decision-making.
The use of an alternative labor model can enhance a finance organization’s data analytics capabilities in several ways. For example, a leading consulting solutions provider can offer access to cutting-edge analytical tools that can process large volumes of data quickly and accurately. This enables CFOs and their teams to pull actionable insights from complex datasets.
Additionally, top consultants can assist with the integration and management of disparate data sources, ensuring finance leaders and other key decision-makers have a unified view of all available financial data. This integration is crucial for accurate analysis and reporting.
By leveraging machine learning and AI capabilities, providers can help CFOs predict and prepare for future trends. Integrating data analytics into decision-making processes allows finance leaders to create a more transparent and responsive work environment.
Cloud technology is transforming how businesses operate, and CFOs are increasingly adopting cloud-based applications for their flexibility and scalability. Highly skilled consultants can help facilitate this critical transition by helping guide the migration of legacy systems to cloud-based platforms, minimizing disruptions and ensuring data integrity.
Cloud-based applications reduce the need for costly on-premises infrastructure, helping businesses to ease the burden of technical debt. Consultants can assist finance leaders in evaluating solutions that will align best with the organization’s IT environment, budget requirements and business needs.
They will also help leaders to consider how cloud apps can facilitate collaboration and shape the future of work for employees, wherever they are working from, and make sure the business fully considers all security, data privacy and compliance issues that can accompany a shift to the cloud.
Consulting solutions can provide your organization with strategy and advisory services and allow you to deploy custom-built teams to help execute projects for accounting and finance, risk and compliance, technology modernization, and much more.
Highly skilled consultants and other resources accessible through alternative labor models can be invaluable to CFOs working to solve myriad challenges in today’s complex financial environment.
Whether they want to enhance BP&A, drive process improvement, improve data analytics capabilities, shift to the cloud, manage evolving HR roles, or all of the above, alternative labor models can provide CFOs with the support they need to achieve their strategic priorities this year — and in the future.
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* Protiviti is a global consulting firm and Robert Half subsidiary.
