Welcome to the CFO EXCHANGE

Things move fast in today’s technology industry landscape, including within your own business environment.


The finance function’s broad scope and increased responsibilities mean that others consistently seek your insights to understand the competitive marketplace and prepare the organization for growth.


We hope this community will be a go-to resource to meet with an exclusive group of peers within the software industry to discuss challenges, exchange learnings, and remain current on trends.


If interested in joining or learning more about the CFO Exchange community, submit your information here.


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Executive Summaries CFO EXCHANGE Highlights
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Industry Perspectives
2022 Technology Challenges

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1
Regulatory changes &
scrutiny
Given the uncertainty about future regulatory changes, there is increasing concern about unknown regulations that may be on the horizon, which could impact the resiliency of TMT operations and the manner in which the group’s products and services are produced and delivered. Prudent technology organizations are investing time and resources to develop and build out their risk and compliance functions to prepare themselves for the inevitable increase in regulations that will impact the industry.
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2
Succession
challenges
Industry organizations are becoming more proactive in implementing alternative labor strategies. This not only includes outsourcing non-core processes and activities and contracting with managed solutions providers, but also the deployment of increased automation and machine technologies, and a broad scope of flexible work arrangements that can be offered for skilled professionals around the world.
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3
Sustaining customer
loyalty and retention
The pandemic has shocked many of the traditional forms of customer interactions. If organizations cannot adjust their operations, legacy IT infrastructure and digital capabilities, they may not meet the expectations of their core customers in a manner sufficient to retain their loyalty. Today's organizations are exploring how they can sustain customer loyalty and retention by increasing profitability through superior top-line performance and reduced marketing costs and other costs associated with educating new customers.
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4
Cybersecurity &
data privacy
Cybersecurity is a moving target as innovative digital transformation initiatives, cloud and emerging technologies continue to outpace the security protections many companies have in place. There are two categories of organizations — those that know they have been breached and those that have been breached but don’t know it yet. Tech companies are shifting focus to address how such events might interrupt core operations and/or damage the brand. Additionally, it is important to realize that challenges related to maintaining data privacy and securing identity protection extend beyond hackers gaining access to systems.
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5
Reliance on third-party partners
Increased third-party risks arising from reliance on outsourcing and strategic sourcing arrangements, IT vendor contracts, and other partnerships/joint ventures to achieve operational goals may prevent technology companies from meeting organizational targets or impact brand image. In today’s ever changing and complex business environment, third-party risk management plays an increasingly critical role in enabling operations, supporting growth and reducing costs. Successful sourcing and procurement organizations address today’s needs and have the foresight to plan for tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities.
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6
Adoption of digital technologies
The adoption of digital technologies, such as those enabled by AI, robotics and natural language processing in their organizations, may require new skills that either are in short supply or require significant efforts to upskill and reskill existing employees. As the future world of work evolves, organizations need to optimize their mix of internal, contracted and interim human talent and electronic workers (machines and algorithms). Without access to the talent that understands the technologies and how they may be deployed, organizations may find themselves behind competitors who can react quickly to assimilate innovations into the business.
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7
Reliability of supply chain
As companies work to compete in today’s business environment, their supply chains have become increasingly global and complex. Technology organizations are facing continuous and evolving disruptions in their supply chains including the viability of key suppliers, scarcity of supplies, volatile shipping and delivery options, and stable prices in the supply chain ecosystem making it difficult to deliver products or services at acceptable margins.
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8
Economic conditions
impacting growth
COVID-19 has brought substantial uncertainty to today's environment, both domestically and internationally, and it all has executives on the edge of their seats wondering about an economic downturn. Resilient organizations are focusing on finance and operations business performance processes that will result in improvements to cash flow, control and optimization of costs, and risk management.
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9
Rapid speed of disruptive innovations & new technologies
The rapid speed of disruptive innovations enabled by new and emerging technologies and/or other market forces may outpace an organization's ability to compete and/or manage the risk appropriately, without making significant changes to the business model. Most have been facing the risk of disruptive innovations for years and are proactively changing business models and adjusting long-term strategies to avoid being disrupted.
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10
Ability to respond to &
recover from setbacks
Systems will fail, cyber-attacks will be successful, and pandemics will occur. Understanding how to minimize the impact of a disruption to external stakeholders and the broader economy, knowing where vulnerabilities lie, and developing foundational elements and operational resilience (e.g., cyber, business, third-party, and technology resilience) is important to help organizations recover more quickly and minimize customer harm.
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Insights
Perspectives from Our Experts on Market Trends, Business
Developments and Risks
2023 Top Risks in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Industry

2022 has been an exigent year for the technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) industry. Many companies continued transformations accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, even as they faced an intensifying regulatory environment, geopolitical turmoil and supply chain disruptions...

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The CFO’s Strategic Contributions Keep Expanding

As the CFO’s strategic star continues to rise, Hubble’s theory of an expanding universe also seems to apply to the broadening purview — and workload — of finance executives. Protiviti’s latest global survey of CFOs and finance leaders shows that the top overall priorities for these leaders continue to proliferate...

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ESG: Nine Actions CFOs and Finance Leaders Can Take Today

Findings from our latest Global Finance Trends survey reveal that environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy and reporting are taking center stage as a top priority of CFOs today. Case in point: In 75% of organizations, the finance team has taken on ESG risks and issues as part of its role...

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Sustainable Cloud Computing

Organizations have grown more productive by embracing the scalability and performance of cloud computing. As they’ve become more sensitive to matters of sustainability, however, organizations will place greater focus on the sustainability of cloud computing models from an overall environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standpoint...

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Talent, Culture and Disruption Are Top-Ranking Risks for CFOs, Survey Shows

I love to learn new words. Whether or not CFOs are familiar with this term, they undoubtedly know its connotation and are dealing with its effects every day. Permacrisis — named by the UK-based Collins English Dictionary as the 2022 word of the year...

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A 5-Step Plan to Operationalize DEIB

As senior leadership teams evaluate their diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) strategies and objectives for 2023, they might consider the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This fundamental physics principle states that the entropy of an isolated system increases over time...

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About Protiviti
Who we are
Protiviti helps emerging, high-growth and established software and SaaS companies drive innovation with responsibility and talent.

We are a global consulting firm that delivers deep expertise, objective insights, a tailored approach, and unparalleled collaboration to help leaders confidently face the future. Our consulting solutions span critical business problems in technology, business process, analytics, risk, compliance, transactions, and internal audit.

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