While last year was tough for U.S. companies, the pressure forcost cuts seems likely to continue this year. New research fromHackett shows that although finance organizations expect to seerevenue grow 4% in 2010, they are planning additional reductions inboth finance budgets and payrolls.

Sean Kracklauer, president of Atlanta-based Hackett, a strategicconsultancy, says that companies' revenues fell an average 15% lastyear and most weren't able to cut their costs quickly enough tomatch the slide. As a result, “they're trying to catch up” thisyear, Kracklauer says.

Hackett's survey found that companies plan to cut financestaffing by 1.9% this year, following cuts of 4.6% last year, andintend to trim finance budgets by 2.4%, following cuts of 4.7% in2009.

Executives also say they're doing their best to maintain thelower levels of spending and staffing they have established duringthe recession. They regard 61% of the cuts in finance staffing aspermanent, as well as 54% of the reductions in finance budgets.“Some of the head count changes are going to come back, but whenthey bring them back, it will probably be in different markets,”Kracklauer says.

Hackett's 2010 Finance Book of Numbers shows that the companiesit designates as “world-class” spend just 0.6% of their revenue tooperate their finance structure, using 44.9 full-time employees per$1 billion of revenue. Meanwhile, “peer-group” companies spent1.13% of revenue on finance and have 93.6 full-time financeemployees per $1 billion of revenue.

After the turmoil of the last two years, Hackett's survey showsthe top priority this year is improving forecasting capabilities,which was cited by 55% of finance executives, followed by improvingthe integration of cash management, which was cited by 44%.