Stanton Chase Releases Results Of 2021 CFO Survey

More than 250 global CFOs share their experiences of the past year in new survey

Stanton Chase is proud to announce the publication of results from its 2021 CFO Survey, in which we caught up with over 250 Chief Financial Officers from around the world to hear their experiences of the past year.

Spearheaded by Stanton Chase’s CFO Practice Group, our in-depth report titled “Trial By Fire: How CFOs Are Stepping Up Amid The Crisis” gives a fresh view of how CFOs around the globe have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and how the crisis in turn is reshaping their role and honing CFOs’ focus on strategy, technology, and human capital.

“The past year has turned the business world upside down, and CFOs have largely had to mitigate the fallout,” says Cathy Logue, who leads the CFO Practice Group. “We can see that these extreme circumstances are rewriting the scope of the CFO, who is now at the forefront of crisis management.”

Compared with our previous CFO survey, there’s been a sharp shift in priorities for management as organizations spent most of 2020 scrambling in crisis mode and are now seeking an even keel for recovery and beyond. Elements such as remote work and offering services online have catapulted from niche benefit to absolute necessity, and organizations are faced with rethinking their entire modus operandi.

Almost 80% of respondents said that the most pressing issue at the moment is the long-term and financial impact of the pandemic, and 86% reported that going forward their main priority is to adapt the existing business model in order to thrive within the future economy. The key to making this happen, they maintain, is through investing in and embracing more technology, namely data and predictive analytics (79%), cloud deployment and data security (53%), and AI and machine learning (46%), and hiring talent with the right tech skills (69%).

“Amid the exceptional circumstances of 2020, CFOs have become the corporate nerve center,” says Jan-Bart Smits, International Chairman of Stanton Chase. “They cite the need to focus on managing costs and liquidity, supporting strategic changes, leadership, and management – all while maintaining a focus on communication with key stakeholders and providing a sense of stability and calm.”

To read more about our survey results, please click here for the full report.

Stanton Chase is a global executive search firm with 76 offices in 45 countries. It has over 30 years’ experience helping to match CFOs and other top executives with organizations around the world. To learn more about Stanton Chase’s CFO Practice Group, please click here.