Business advisory

CFOs are struggling to meet the increasing and competing demands of the business, particularly in the current economic climate. The compliance burden has grown, the finance function is subject to increasing cost pressure, whilst the demand for more and better management information challenges the function to do more at lower cost.

CFOs are juggling three agendas; Insight, Efficiency, Compliance and Control, and turning to us to help them strike the right balance. They want to secure the finance function to support the business during the downturn, but lay the groundwork to build a high performing function for the future.

Creating a case for change

A number of factors are creating a hunger for sustainable change in the finance function:

Management triggers

Pressure to cut costs
Ineffective or inefficient use of cash
Budgeting and forecasting is unreliable or time consuming
High cost of finance vs. peer comparison
Poor, unreliable, or slow management information (MI)
Lack of accountability for non-financial MI
Synergies not realised from recently merged or acquired entities
Finance staff feel undervalued by the business

Compliance and reporting triggers

Pressure to report more information more quickly (internal and external)
Manual and non-standard reporting
Changes in legislation
Compliance costs deemed too high

Complexity triggers

Increased complexity e.g. wider use of alliances and joint ventures
Multiple legal entities as a result of acquisition activity
Mismatch between legal (statutory) and management structures
Inconsistent ways of working between finance and other functions
Multiple finance systems and different charts of account
Need for simpler and standardised processes

Process triggers

Shared services not delivering predicted benefits
Prevalence of spreadsheets and off system activities
High level of errors / rework
High levels of manual intervention
Duplication of activities
Unclear ownership
Inefficient tax planning processes