The CIMA Improving Decision Making in Organisations Forum (the CIMA Forum) has noted that many leading companies have already seized the opportunities presented by finance transformation to improve the efficiency of their finance and accounting (F&A) operations and to engage F&A personnel as finance/business partners to improve decision-making.

High-performing companies usually have high-performing finance functions. Although the causality has not been proven with academic rigour, the correlation is clear. Surveys by leading consulting organisations support the CIMA Forum’s view. These leading companies seem to be empowered by their finance functions to improve their decision-making and financial performance.

Decision-making is becoming the basis of competitive advantage and value creation. If markets give all organisations access to similar resources globally and competition causes many routine business processes to converge on world-class standards, the quality of decision-making could become the key differentiator.

Finance transformation provides an opportunity for the F&A function to improve its operating efficiency and provide high-quality financial and management information to support decision-making. It also provides an opportunity to improve its effectiveness by engaging finance personnel, who have the skills to collaborate with the business, to contribute to improving decision-making and business’ financial performance as finance/business partners.

As finance can help improve decision-making, any company that does not transform its finance function risks putting itself at a competitive disadvantage. A summary of the report reveals the following situations:

• Most CIMA Forum members now have shared service centres (SSCs), whether in-house or outsourced, onshore or offshore. SSCs were introduced to achieve cost savings in routine activities (for example, transaction processing and standard reports) but they also allow the implementation of uniform systems and streamlined processes. They often have the scale to allow further talent development than may have been envisaged. Some CIMA Forum members are now looking for further efficiency gains in business processes and for their SSCs to also provide less-routine, higher-value services.

• Other CIMA Forum members are looking to achieve a step change more rapidly by harnessing expertise — for example, in systems implementation and business-process improvement. These services are now available offshore through business process outsourcing (BPO) providers. Although many organisations are still wary, BPO has developed and should be considered.

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have long threatened the traditional role of the management accountant. But they have actually kept accountants busy using spreadsheets to produce reports in the format required by the business, investigating discrepancies and conducting ad hoc analysis. However, ERP vendors have been acquiring corporate or enterprise performance management (CPM/EPM) systems to overcome ERP’s limitations. The experience of members of the CIMA Forum confirms that these applications can release capacity for accountants to become finance/business partners, thus improving Decision-making in organisations.

• Finance/business partnering varies in form. Credibility as a finance/business partner usually rests on the financial expertise and analytical rigour contributing to Decision-making, rather than an ability to provide expertise or leadership in other business disciplines.