Our Digital Transformation is reliant on significant business technology investments that promote profitability and growth. Will your Chief Financial Officer (CFO) decline your next request for IT project funding due to the present global economic outlook? Reconsider your position.
According to Gartner’s recent global market analysis, 78% of CFOs aim to maintain or enhance their enterprise-wide digital investments in the next two years.
The findings come as CFOs indicate that if inflation continues this year, they will cut costs in other areas of the organization.
Market Development for Digital Transformation
According to Alexander Bant, Gartner’s chief of finance research, “companies that drive the correct digital expenditures have 2.7x higher customer retention, 1.6x better customer satisfaction ratings, and 1.9x higher average order value.”
Leading digital-enabled businesses are also three times more likely to expand revenue and margins faster than the industry average. According to Gartner, 67 percent of consumers are willing to spend more for a superior digital experience.
Gartner polled CFOs about their plans for technology spending in their departments and across the company through 2023. At the corporate level, 46% of respondents stated they are increasing their digital spending plans, while 32% said they had no plans to change.
According to the poll results, CFOs intend to accelerate the momentum of Digital Transformation investments that began in earnest at the start of the pandemic, in accordance with Gartner’s IT Spending Forecast for 2022, which predicts an overall increase in global IT spending.
Inflation, according to Bant, is a new driver driving CFOs to raise digital business project investments in order to cut the cost of doing business while also uncovering new sources of profitability and growth.
“CFOs are very well aware of the importance of not squandering a crisis or downturn. It’s time to reinvent yourself, make smarter investments, and save costs “Bant remarked.
The victors on the other side of this cycle, according to Gartner, will have continued to advance the correct digital initiatives across their business, despite growing profit pressures.
CFOs plan to spend even more aggressively on business technology inside their own departments, with 52 percent intending to increase digital investments and 38 percent intending to maintain current levels.
Furthermore, the CFO’s increased focus on automation as an inflation-mitigation technique fits with findings from a separate Gartner survey, which asked finance leaders about their plans for specific Finance Technologies over the next two years.
The data revealed a planned rise in investment in robotic process automation (RPA), reporting automation, and process mining, all of which are crucial for reducing mundane procedures and allowing employees to focus on higher-value tasks and increasing productivity.
Employee Digital Transformation Apps in the Future
While negotiating growing inflation, supply chain bottlenecks, a digital talent scarcity, and ESG expectations, enterprise CFOs are attempting to meet the rapidly expanding needs of all major stakeholders.
The growing demands of these stakeholders, as well as macro business challenges, push CFOs to elevate and give more real-time, predictive, error-free, always-on support in order to ensure profitable and sustainable digital company growth.
However, I anticipate CFOs will place a greater emphasis on the ’employee experience’ benefits of IT expenditures. The upgrading of Digital Workspaces, for example, enables a scattered workforce to excel. Customer value has been shown to be enhanced through modern employee experiences.
CFOs must fund the IT roadmap for a flexible working platform that transforms employee processes into a better future state. Qualified IT vendors will assist CFOs in furthering their company’s digital business growth by sharing what the most successful industry peer groups have already accomplished.
