Without wishing to state the obvious, 2020 has been a challenging year. With US political tension, US/ China economic conflict, Brexit, and the commercial and emotional impact of Covid-19, it has been tough. Many organisations have classified the effect of the pandemic as posing either a severe or having a significant impact on their business.
In a recent CFO survey by Deloitte, 57% of respondents said their focus was on reducing costs and increasing cash flow to help mitigate the impact of a changing business landscape. During the pandemic businesses have focussed on investments in organisational and business process, improvements across both software and data, and general IT. Unsurprisingly that focus looks set to continue during 2021 ensuring businesses will be fit for purpose as the ‘new normal’ emerges.
Over the past year, Norman Broadbent’s interim Finance Practice has seen a staggering increase (over 68%) in clients seeking support to deliver finance change and transformation programmes. Clients have been a mixture of FTSE and AIM listed PLCs, who have been redefining their new target operating models to achieve significant savings through simplification of organisational structures, automation of back office processes, and better real time MI through more effective ERP technological improvement.
We have also seen a significant increase in clients wishing to deploy a balanced approach when delivering finance transformation projects. This has manifested itself in clients deliberately mixing/blending external interim consultants (typically Ex Big 4) with their own senior leadership team. The drivers behind this shift away from Big 4 management consultancies delivering such change programmes have been around clients requiring more effective knowledge transfer, the opportunity to upskill and develop their existing leadership team, and significant cost savings. Clients have become even more outcome focused with defined milestones along the transformation journey. In summary they are seeking defined ROI in terms of time spent, business improvement, reduction in costs.
Outside of Finance Transformation programmes, there has been continued demand across the four key skill competency areas. Demand has continued to exceed supply for skilled:
- Finance Directors
- Financial Controllers
- Corporate Tax Directors
- Treasury Directors
<u>Projections for 2021</u>
With the new Covid-19 variant impacting the UK, many clients have, and are continuing to opt for, interim resource to fill business critical positions. This is for three main reasons:
- Flexibility of the contract engagement;
- Guaranteeing the quality of resource in a landscape where prospective permanent staff may be reluctant to move companies;
- Objectivity of what good looks like due to the breadth of expertise and experience gained from working in a broad range of organisations.
Until the UK economy begins to stabilise, we believe clients will continue to opt for highly experienced and flexible Interim resources. For the time being, the new norm seems to reflect a continued pattern of remote working, with clients requiring seasoned hires at short notice on an interim basis until such time they feel confident in reinvesting in FTE headcount to achieve the right long term permanent solution.
If you would like to discuss our findings in more detail, the wider market, and/or your growth plans and challenges for 2021, please do not hesitate to contact Jonathan Stringer, Managing Director, Finance Officers Practice via
Jonathan.stringer@normanbroadbent.com or +44(0) 7483 015 307