Has your finance function outgrown the way it works

Has your finance function outgrown the way it works

Growth is good for business. It is not always easy for the finance function.

As an organisation grows, finance inherits more entities, more transactions, more systems, more controls and more stakeholders. Yet the processes supporting the close often remain largely unchanged.

The close still happens. Reconciliations are completed. Journals are posted. Reports are produced. But underneath the surface, spreadsheets, email, manual checking and individual knowledge may be doing more of the work.

At what point does a process that still works become a process that no longer scales?

That is the question explored in our new finance leadership briefing, Has Your Finance Function Outgrown the Way It Works?

Five signs that complexity is starting to bite

The warning signs are rarely dramatic. They tend to appear as familiar frustrations:

• The status of the close is difficult to see without chasing people.
• Spreadsheets have become part of the control environment.
• Critical processes depend on individual knowledge.
• Finance professionals spend too much time checking, moving and correcting information.
• Adding an entity, ERP or acquisition creates a disproportionate amount of additional work.

None of these automatically means the finance team is underperforming. They may simply show that the organisation has outgrown processes designed for a less complex business.

What leading finance teams are doing differently

The report brings the issue to life through customer evidence. Tecan reduced internal audit lead times by around one week while improving visibility over reconciliation controls. AkzoNobel uses Aico across 499 entities, 150 countries and seven SAP instances. Signify has used self service configuration to put more control of journal automation into the hands of finance. ISS demonstrates the value of bringing greater structure and visibility to a complex international close.

These examples point to a broader lesson: automation creates the greatest value when it gives finance capacity back, strengthens control and helps the operating model scale.

Do not start with technology

The first question should not be which platform to buy. Start by identifying where manual work consumes the most capacity, where the process depends on people remembering what to do, and where information moves manually between systems.

Then ask what your finance team could achieve if that capacity were released.

Our new report provides a practical framework for assessing the close, identifying the sources of friction and considering where automation can make the biggest difference. It also explains why solving today’s close challenge should not create tomorrow’s technology problem.

Download the report

Download Has Your Finance Function Outgrown the Way It Works? to explore the warning signs, customer examples and practical questions that can help you build a more controlled, visible and scalable finance operation.

Download the report