Technology, staffing flagged as top challenges for 2025
Managing staffing, retaining talent and adopting new technologies will again be some of the tougher challenges for CFOs and finance teams next year, according to the group financial controller of Webjet.
Ensuring finance teams have adequate skills and resourcing to be able to deliver strategic outcomes for organisations and embrace advancements in technology will be an important but challenging task for CFOs and financial controllers next year, group financial controller of Webjet, Matthew McKenzie, has said.
McKenzie said the ability for organisations to source skilled accounting professionals from other countries has shifted following the COVID-19 period which has seen organisations continue to struggle with talent shortages.
“Before Covid you would have a lot of Irish, British and European Chartered Accountants and CPAs coming across so you were able to source labour from external markets,” he said.
“However, post-Covid, that dynamic has shifted a bit and the focus is now on how to build good, homegrown resourcing.”
At the same time, McKenzie said COVID-19 opened up new ways of working, which creates both opportunities and risks in terms of attracting and retaining talent.
“Covid has taught us that we can work from home and you can work from anywhere. So, if I think about my team, we’ve got people from Spain, people in Dubai, people in London and people here in Melbourne,” he said.
“So, we’re a global company and it’s almost seamless. Technology is the force multiplier that enables us to do that. However, one of the risks with that is around retention of talent.”
CFOs and financial controllers therefore have the challenge of ensuring that they have the right resources in place to fulfil whatever strategic plans they have, McKenzie explained.
It is critical that the company or organisation makes their employees feel like their roles are meaningful so that staff feel like there’s development and a career path that the company will help them build, he said.
Another important element will be talking to staff about how their role will transform as technology further advances.
McKenzie said his team are looking ahead to what 2030 might potentially look like in terms of what the finance team of the future looks like and what the roles and responsibilities will be.
“It will be working with the HR teams, working with the operations teams and thinking about how we can better utilise technology to enable us to continue to grow,” he said.
“You can’t really account for any of the macro-economic issues that come out, whether it’s conflicts or election outcomes, there’s always going to be things that are outside of your control.
“It’s always going to be based on what can we control in our space. That’s going to be around technology [in terms of] how we embrace it and how we utilize it to its full capacity. It’s also going to be around how we develop our teams and give them the space to give them opportunities so that they want to stick around.”
McKenzie said CFOs and other leaders in finance teams will also need to contend with a much faster rate of technological change as artificial intelligence further advances, particularly in the accounting space.
The advancement of AI means technology will accelerate at a much faster rate now over the next ten years than it has grown over the past 30 years.
“When I started my audit career we had one laptop for a whole audit team, now you can do everything through your phone,” he said.
“I think the acceleration in technology that we’re seeing now is around AI learning, analysing your algorithms in terms of how you get to market and understanding your pricing mechanisms.”
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