Elissa Tucker, my APQC colleague, and I recently gave a presentation to a webinar audience organized by www.proformative.com. Our topic: APQC research suggests that that there is a shrinking pipeline of entry-level finance and accounting talent—and too many senior finance leaders don’t recognize this as a potential crisis. Not only is there a lack of awareness, there is a lack of knowledge about practical interventions that could be deployed now to mitigate the negative consequences that loom over the horizon.
Several months ago, Elissa and I developed an APQC white paper, sponsored by the Institute of Management Accounting’s “Competency Crisis Initiative.” We gathered survey results from nearly 200 global companies. If you missed it and would like to take a look, click here for a free download: https://www.apqc.org/knowledge-base/documents/skills-gap-entry-level-management-accounting-and-finance
Meanwhile, we had an interesting question come in from a member of the webinar audience: Do you think the finance outsourcing trend has contributed to finance not being an attractive career for new talent?
Here’s my reply (and please do let me know if you agree or disagree):
This question can only be answered subjectively. In other words, it seems your underlying assumption is that “word has gotten out” that it’s no use pursuing a finance and accounting career track because the risk of losing your job at some point to a counterpart who works for a 3rd party business services provider is too great. But here is one angle to consider. If a large global company deems it to be wise from a cost-management perspective to outsource the bulk of its transaction processing activity—e.g., remittance processing or payables processing—or even move that work into a regional “captive” shared services organization—then it’s likely that the finance professionals who are retained are focused (more or less) on value-adding work. If the transaction processing work is shipped elsewhere, then the retained people are more likely to be engaging and engaged. Surely, there are differing perspectives on this. And, of course, if you happen to be a highly motivated employee with strong potential working for a 3rd party, you may very well have a good opportunity to climb the supervisory ladder. As the saying goes, change is now constant.