The Path 90% of CFOs Took: Outsourcing and Digital Transformation

According to Personiv's CFO Pulse Survey, the shortage of finance and accounting talent has become a serious challenge for a lot of companies. The usual suspects: steep education requirements, low pay, and poor work-life balance. As a result, many CFOs are finding it hard to hire in-house and are turning to outsourcing or taking a hard look at digital transformation instead.

The hiring squeeze and filling open roles

Even so, plenty of CFOs are still fighting to attract talent. The survey found that 67% of CFOs want to hire staff accountants, with strong demand for senior accountants (43%) and tax accountants (24%) as well.

But with the average U.S. time-to-hire stretching to 44 days, other team members have to pick up the slack in the meantime — and onboarding piles on additional time and cost.

Where the line falls between what you can and can't outsource

The work that happens inside a finance and accounting function breaks down into two buckets. Routine, repetitive work like standard bookkeeping is a good fit for outsourcing, but work that drives strategic decisions or demands deep, specialized expertise usually needs to stay in-house.

Financial analysis, budgeting, and regulatory compliance, for instance, are tightly linked to a company's long-term growth — classic examples of work that's hard to hand off. For the same reason, core finance functions like capital raising and investment management are typically managed directly by the internal team.

The reality of the outsourcing CFOs have chosen

Personiv's survey found that 90% of CFOs are outsourcing at least some accounting functions. It's a way to tap experienced accounting talent exactly when you need it, and one of the more effective levers for easing the hiring crunch.

For the work that can't be outsourced, CFOs are aggressively adopting digital transformation (DX) and AI-driven automation to boost efficiency. These technologies automate the repetitive, time-consuming tasks — easing the talent shortage and meaningfully lifting productivity.

What actually attracts talent: culture and work-life balance

According to the survey, the factors that matter most in attracting talent are a positive company culture (17%), work-life balance (16%), and recognition and appreciation (15%).

Competitive pay and benefits ranked relatively low — a sign that culture and work-life balance carry far more weight in landing talent than you might expect.

Personiv's Matt Wood stresses the importance of weighing all of these factors together — and recommends going beyond hiring to solve the talent shortage through AI adoption and digital transformation.

Bringing in this kind of technology eases the talent crunch in the short term and, over the long run, maximizes the efficiency of your finance processes while delivering real cost savings — a genuinely strategic play.

Source: https://www.cfo.com/trendline/top-5-stories-cfo-leaders/492/