Nearly half (47%) of the UK and Ireland’s largest organisations say that they need to significantly improve their financial planning and analysis (FP&A) to support their future resilience to market shocks.
The new research from HR, payroll and finance experts MHR International reveals that this is far higher on the agenda than for the average UK and Irish organisation, where just over a third (36%) agreed the same.
Only 37 percent of respondents who had made significant changes to increase their organisation’s business resilience in the last five years said that more informed planning and analysis was one of the routes to doing so.
This is behind digital transformation (48%), process improvements (48%) and workforce management (44%).
Business disruption
FP&A improvements didn’t make it into the top five operational changes made to the organisation in the past, and was only fifth on the list for such measures in the future.
Perhaps ironically, ‘fear of business disruption’ was the top reason why organisations are holding back from investing in the tools, technologies and platforms needed to boost their resilience to such disruptions in the future.
Mark Jenkins, CFO at MHR said: “FP&A is not yet being used as an effective part of a business’ arsenal to fend against market shocks and increase business resilience. With a backdrop of market volatility, black swan events, and a recession on the horizon, getting financial forecasting right has never been more important.”
Confidence in business modelling is low
The research also revealed that just one in three (32%) organisations are ‘very confident’ in the accuracy of their business reporting and modelling – whereas nearly one in five (18%) of the leaders surveyed were less than ‘somewhat’ confident.
Similarly, less than a third (29%) said that their organisation had a ‘good understanding’ of the current and future risks facing the business.
The reasons behind this lack of confidence were also interesting.
Nearly three quarters (73%) of organisations struggle with getting clear visibility of company performance and key metrics, with over a quarter of businesses (26%) saying this is ‘very challenging’.
Cost is also a barrier: 51 percent of the businesses surveyed said that they could ‘just about cover’ any investment needed to support operational changes – indeed, four in five leaders said their organisation had or was planning to seek external loans to support their cashflow, and a quarter (25%) said they had a lack of funding to make such changes.
“There is understandably a hesitance to make new investments at a time when we’ve already experienced so much uncertainty, and there is more to come. But the only way to overcome this uncertainty is to be sure that your business is safe and secure to come out of this disruption on the other side – and business planning is a crucial part of this, added Jenkins.
Amelia Brand is the Editor for HRreview, and host of the HR in Review podcast series. With a Master’s degree in Legal and Political Theory, her particular interests within HR include employment law, DE&I, and wellbeing within the workplace. Prior to working with HRreview, Amelia was Sub-Editor of a magazine, and Editor of the Environmental Justice Project at University College London, writing and overseeing articles into UCL’s weekly newsletter. Her previous academic work has focused on philosophy, politics and law, with a special focus on how artificial intelligence will feature in the future.
