Finance Strategy Consulting

• Faster close: enabling less time to be spent on the mechanics of the reporting cycle, and more on business support and business partnering.
• Finance efficiency and reducing data gathering in favour of data analysis: often linked to faster close, many organisations are trying to rebalance their effort to spend less time on gathering and validating suitably high quality data, in favour of releasing more time to invest in analysis and insight. And, of course, the overall focus on  finance efficiency - considering basic ‘top down’ metrics such as finance function costs as a percentage of turnover - remains important as companies seek to maximise the value of their finance headcount and location strategy (linking to many of the other themes discussed here).
• Automation of controls: the majority of controls in many organisations are still highly manual, although there is clear movement towards greater automation, particularly as new technologies (such as Robotic Process Automation) may offer some significant potential to go further in this respect.
• Zero-based budgeting: although not a new concept, the systematic implementation of ZBB thinking and processes is having a significant impact right across the business.
• Finance structure and effective business partnering: Finance is fast adapting to partner the changing face of the business, and to continue to drive efficiency and value. Streamlining across group / corporate finance and federated finance teams (at business unit or country level) continues apace, and the historic lines between financial, management and commercial finance roles may start to blur.
• Finance shared services: there continues to be significant evolution of finance shared services, whether that’s driven by expanding scope and remit; responding to merger and acquisition activity; changing the insource vs outsource supply mix; seeking further advantage from low cost location strategies; or integrating into a multi-functional shared service environment.
• Finance data, analytics & insight: the world of traditional reporting is being transformed by modern analytics tools and techniques (such as data visualisation). Modern tools empower much greater business self service which is democratising access to information, allowing greater rationalisation of reporting, and changing the role of Finance. The Big Data revolution is also transforming the business’s appetite and expectations of their access to information (in terms of quality, quantity and timeliness) and the level of insight and value they expect to drive from it. In many businesses, the Finance function has a key role in information and data (especially master data) that extends well outside the remit of pure finance data, making this area all the more important.
• Finance technology: traditional finance Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are being transformed by technology advances, such as in-memory computing which may enable much closer integration of budgeting and forecasting with actuals processing, potentially changing the role of the Financial Planning and Accounting (FP&A) function. Delivering key Finance applications via the Cloud is also becoming more commonplace, to unlock greater agility and reduced cost of ownership, despite the security and control challenges that may be perceived. Finally, Robotic Process Automation is being considered by many due the potential it may offer to unlock the next wave of finance automation and efficiency.

We have helped our clients transform and succeed in all these areas and more. We can help you both with defining the strategy for your Finance function, or with delivery of the change you need to achieve it.

How we can help

We’ve worked with many of the world’s leading companies on their most challenging finance transformation programmes – from early vision, strategy and business case, right through the hard yards of delivery.

Our experience extends across all finance process areas – including Record-to-Report, Order-to-Cash, Procure-to-Pay, Treasury and more. We can bring a compelling combination of industry and business knowledge relevant to your sector, finance functional understanding, technology expertise and the transformational change know how to make it all happen. We help finance and finance technology executives understand how best to move their business forward – and we work closely with them to get on and make it happen.

With our ‘low volume, high value’ model, we won’t overwhelm with large teams or take months to produce results. Typically only using one or two highly experienced and high calibre people, we can assess and turn around major programmes in weeks, or help you cut through to a core strategy in a matter of days. Above all, this is about sound judgement – doing enough analysis and drawing on our experience to help our clients make a confident call on what’s right for them. We work as close knit part of your team, doing the work ‘with you, not to you’, and getting to results that have real ownership and buy-in.