Respondents to Deloitte’s fourth-quarter 2021 “CFO Signals” survey revealed the key challenges facing CFOs and finance leaders include attracting and retaining talent, and wage inflation, along with strategy execution and the pace of technology developments and innovation, as the internal risks that worry CFOs most. 

Further, the survey listed inflation, supply chain challenges, potential policy and regulatory changes, as well as COVID-19 and its variants, as the CFOs’ top external worries.

CFOs have identified talent, financial performance, and growth as the top three priorities for 2022, followed by strategy setting, cost management, capital allocation and IT infrastructure.

FutureCFO spoke to Srinivasan Venkat Padmanabhan, chairman of the Manas Group, for his take on how finance is evolving in 2022, and how CFOs and finance heads must bring together the finance team to meet the challenges of the post-pandemic economy.

1.              As a head of finance, what were the three most challenging aspects of 2020 and 2021?

2.              How do you see technologies helping drive digital success for finance functions?

3.              As a leader yourself, how do you encourage the restructuring or modernization or transformation of finance to support the overall digital transformation that the business is going through?

4.              Can you cite one or two ways in which finance leaders can improve the return on the organization’s digital investments?

5.              What do you see will be the most important functions of the CFO or the heads of finance in this post pandemic model that we are in right now?