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Why Finance Talent Should Matter—To Everyone
In 2025, Will Your Business Have the Finance Talent It Needs? If you don’t work in the finance function, you might think that this question isn’t relevant to you—but you’d be wrong. This question should matter to you (and everyone who works in an organization) because what’s happening with…
Better Budgeting is My Top Finance Priority for 2017—What’s Yours?
Like everyone else who is currently older than about 25, I was forced to learn how to write in cursive during elementary school. And also just like the rest of my peers, my application of cursive is now pretty much limited to my signature. Do you know what would have been a much better use of the…
How Can Big Companies Keep Millennials From Leaving?
The days of staying at a company until retirement is now a foreign concept to many people—most of all, millennials. We know that millennials are more likely than any previous generation to switch jobs and that six in 10 millennials are open to new job opportunities. This is a great cause of…
How Is Paper Still a Thing?
It’s almost 2017. The accounts payable (AP) manager has an abundance of technology innovations from which to choose to make the process run faster, better, and cheaper. For example, there are workflow automation solutions that help to reduce duplicate payments, late payments, strengthen internal…
The Finance Mission—A Good Time for Reflection
As we head into the last quarter of the business year, financial analysts are surely keen to see how useful their forays into data analytics will look when the final buzzer goes off. Have these efforts to buoy business performance paid off? What are CFOs planning to do to balance investments in new…
Finance Needs New Skills to Stay Relevant
Three quarters of finance executives who responded to a recent APQC survey are engaged in some form of finance function improvement. Unsurprisingly, CFOs want finance to push for greater cost-efficiency. That campaign will never end, especially as finance moves stridently toward robotics and…
Why Finance Has No Incentives for Process Improvements and How To Change It
APQC recently chatted with Gabriel Zubizarreta on the challenges of process improvement in finance departments and why leveraging change is about culture. Gabe will be leading the breakout session, Leveraging Change for Process Improvement, at APQC’s 2016 Process improvement Conference Oct. 3-7.…
Finance Transformation in 2016: Raising the Bar on Business Analysis
According to new research conducted by APQC, finance leaders are keenly aware of the need to improve the finance function. What’s so new about that? A lot, actually. For starters, business managers are changing their tune when it comes to what they want from finance. They now insist that finance…
Why Aren’t More Women in Leadership Positions?
As I hear and read about women in business, the same question keeps resurfacing: Why aren’t more women in leadership positions? Organizations are striving to improve gender equity figures in the hopes that a more diverse workforce will appeal to an increasingly diverse customer base. In addition,…
Finance Process Efficiency: the Hunt Continues
When an overwhelming majority of finance executives say they want to be sure their financial process costs are in line, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve stumbled into a time warp. APQC has been tracking these efficiency metrics for many years. CFOs and corporate controllers in the U.S., Europe, and…