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As we turn the corner and enter a new year, we begin 2023 with hope for better times, as the last few years have been challenging for many family offices. At Sage, we have been taking notes during our conversations with customers, partners, and industry leaders throughout the past few months. We have assembled a few thoughts on how we will be approaching 2023, and how the macroeconomic and socioeconomic changes we see in our communities will affect the technology decisions we make in the accounting and finance community.

Here are our five predictions for accounting and finance in 2023 that we’d like to share:

1. With most experts predicting a recessionary climate in 2023, family offices will approach the year with cost containment as a priority; some will look to technology solutions to help streamline their accounting and finance workflows in an effort to free their staff to focus on critical business tasks. With recession era budgets tight, squeezing the value out of the technology investments they’ve already made will become more important to family offices.
2. Family offices have not escaped the staffing challenges seen in recent years. The labor crunch of 2022 will continue at the CFO and controller level, but ease in lower-level staffing as automation and analytics opportunities guide these staff toward more advanced positions. The use of technology will continue to emphasize more strategic roles, and family offices will continue to focus on upskilling staff for these higher-level positions that remain difficult to hire.
3. Environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts will continue to be top-of-mind for family office leaders. While there remains uncertainty as to the specific regulatory impact, forward looking family offices are factoring in ESG-related metrics into their overall data strategy. ESG initiatives will increasingly be integrated into business decisions as the benefits of building sustainable and automated ESG best practices extend to financial gains.
4. Cyberattacks remain a key threat for family offices, and cybersecurity evolves beyond table stakes as the global climate continues to increase the risk of an attack. Security of systems and data continues to be a perpetual operating burden and we will continue to see investment in protection and security, perhaps magnified by the recession as costs and the value of information become higher and more valuable.
5. Automation and AI will continue to proliferate in 2023. Knowing how to effectively and efficiently introduce finance automation will de-risk important decisions by improving the speed and quality of financial reporting and controls. Family offices will continue to seek access to analytics and real-time data needed to run their family businesses better, as well as decision support built on top of these analytics and data.

As we look forward to the coming year, we hope these predictions will help you and your finance team to look holistically at your environment and how you can adjust processes to gain competitive advantage in the coming year, despite the challenging business conditions expected.