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SWTCH by Pigment
Three days of predictions, insights, and advice from leaders in finance, sales, HR, supply chain and more
Register now here
By Nilly Essaides, Senior Research Director Finance/EPM at The Hackett Group
Business partnering is something everyone is talking about right now. The premise is that the more low-value finance tasks are automated, the more time finance practitioners have to work with their “customers” in the business. The only problem is that many business leaders are far from satisfied with finance’s performance to date as a valued business partner.
The Hackett Group data shows that only about a third of finance stakeholders in 2018 perceive it to be a valued business partner. The rest (see image below) see it as much more of a traditional finance function, setting policy, processing transactions and offering financial insight.
What’s more important is the pie on the right: what stakeholders would like to see – a 2.6X increase in finance’s business engagement. Clearly finance has a long way to go.
The data looks largely the same for 2016 and 2014. So, there’s no real improvement, despite digital transformation; the broad agreement that the real value finance offers is its collaboration with the business; and the fact that management is asking finance to play a bigger business advice role.
Perception does not necessarily equal reality. It may well be that finance is a lot more engaged with the business today, but its stakeholders have failed to notice. Here are five steps finance can take to alter this perception:
The reality is that finance rarely measures its value contribution to the business. So, it cannot tell how and where it needs to improve to affect the reality, and perception, of its role as a valued business partner. Collecting metrics of value contribution is not easy. It’s much easier to measure process cost, or number of errors. But there are ways. One possible approach is to track the performance of business projects that have benefited from finance’s recommendations. Another is to track the business processes improvement achieved through finance recommendations. Finance must evangelize its value as a business partner by sharing tangible results and socializing its potential contribution throughout the enterprise.
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