SG Finance Leaders Still Use Guts for Decision Making

According to the latest survey, only 3% of Singapore finance and IT leaders have a robust digital finance transformation strategy, indicating that most Singapore companies still need to enhance digital transformation in the finance department.

Workday published its survey, The CFO and CIO Indicator Study, which examined the state of digital finance transformation and how these efforts were impacted by finance and IT. 

Among 1,060 finance and IT leaders surveyed from around the world — including Singapore  — the study found that lack of adaptable technology was the biggest obstacle to financial transformation at Singapore companies. Other barriers included a lack of financial literacy among IT teams and cybersecurity challenges posed by an evolving threat landscape.

Only 4 in 10 Singaporeans were confident that their current financial technologies could support organizational pivots during a crisis. Furthermore, an astounding two-thirds of Singapore finance leaders — 64% — said they were forced to make decisions based on gut instincts because of siloed data, data not in the correct format, or not being readily available.

The survey highlighted three key challenges that hampered Singapore companies' ability to transform successfully: the lack of alignment, tech challenges, and the need to increase cross-functional finance and IT skills.

43% of Singapore business leaders admitted that their CIOs did not have a seat at the table during critical finance meetings, even when technology was essential to solving a challenge.

Furthermore, more than half of the survey respondents (57%) believed their legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems were not flexible enough for today's business requirements.

Only a small percentage of Singapore business leaders (7%) indicated that investments in upskilling and hiring IT talent with financial literacy skills were a top priority.  This is despite half (50%) of Singapore IT leaders saying they were under pressure to innovate finance technology despite limited financial literacy.

“The power of data is becoming increasingly apparent in this digital age, but many organizations still face challenges when it comes to managing and harnessing the value of vast amounts of data,” said Lee Thong Tan, CFO practice lead for Asia, Workday. 

“As the finance function evolves to take on an increasingly strategic role that propels the organization forward, it is key that IT and finance leaders work closely together, to deliver on a finance transformation strategy that leverages analytics and actionable insights for smarter business decisions in a fast-evolving environment,” he added.

Image credit: iStockphoto/metamorworks