Most senior executives in firms across European and Middle Eastern countries are focusing on making their businesses fit for today, in preparation for growth going forward, said a recent survey.

The survey, conducted by global audit, tax and advisory firm, KPMG incorporates feedback from about 1,500 CFOs and CEOs across 22 European and Middle Eastern countries, including Bahrain.

“Most are focusing on business performance management – aligning their cost base to their organization’s future strategy and ensuring cash and working capital,” said KPMG in Bahrain’s head of advisory, Narayanan Ramachandran.

“The top priorities are ‘changing business operations to realize cost efficiencies’ (a priority for 51 per cent of senior executives), ‘improving cash and working capital management’ (42 per cent) and ‘preparing your organization for major business model changes’ (33 per cent).”

“The majority of business leaders in Europe and the Middle East (64 per cent) agree that Europe’s position as a world economic and political superpower has peaked and that its importance will decline over coming years,” Ramachandran added.

Similarly to their regional and European counterparts, many Bahrain business leaders place a high importance on ‘making better use of company data for more effective planning and forecasting, including ‘changing business operations to realize cost efficiencies’ – but perhaps for slightly different reasons, the survey said.

Going forward, government and regional investment are expected to have an immediate impact on Bahrain’s economic recovery.

Further reforms, however, and a planned revision of the national economic strategy, will be crucial to the kingdom’s long-term growth and prosperity. Within this context, many government institutions, agencies and private businesses are looking at their internal reform agendas.

For many, this includes rolling out transformation programs to deliver operational efficiencies to enhance performance. This means getting their business systems and processes in order, developing clear strategic objectives and better managing risk, according to the survey.

Bahrain-based respondents place a far greater emphasis on ‘addressing risk throughout the organisation’ (42 per cent compared to 30 per cent as a survey average), demonstrating the increasing emphasis on corporate governance and financial risk management, the survey said. – TradeArabia News Service