Talent is a vital part of any advanced analytics center of excellence (ACOE) and often CFOs limit the scope of their ACOE projects by relying too heavily on finance staff, according to Gartner, Inc. CFOs should look at other, sometimes cheaper, talent sources, such as analytic staff from other functions, university hires, or third-party service providers who are more than capable of executing certain elements of the analytics development cycle.
“Many CFOs are finding that their finance budget is not expanding to meet their advanced analytics ambitions,” said Marco Steecker, director, research in the Gartner Finance practice. “They can then end up settling for pursuing greater efficiencies with existing analytics capabilities instead of driving truly transformational improvements through new analytics capabilities.”
Gartner experts caution that this efficiency-centric approach may free up capacity, but it can also cause CFOs to overlook the variety of other cost-effective support available in other parts of their organization and outside of it.
“Targeting efficiency gains is a comfortable fallback for CFOs because it allows for the kind of definitive, prescriptive project scope which tends to appeal most to those with finance backgrounds,” said Steecker. “Yet to get the most from advanced analytics CFOs need to get comfortable with less formal, more exploratory projects that can yield unexpected benefits and learnings.”
Alternative Talent
Finance staff generally have a comparative advantage with regard to development of finance analytics, due to their financial literacy and familiarity with data sources, but other talent sources such as university students and third-party service providers have other strengths. Each source of alternative analytic talent has different inherent comparative advantages at performing certain elements of the analytic process (see Figure 1).
