FINANCE STRATEGY

The role of the Finance function has never been more challenging or complex. With the advent of Sarbanes Oxley, increasing pressures from capital markets for greater visibility to performance, and ever-increasingly complex business models, today’s Finance organizations must continually reassess the effectiveness and efficiency of the Finance function. Today’s Finance team can no longer function as a back office support role. Leading organizations have developed strategic and disciplined Finance functions. Those Finance functions have three critical imperatives:

• Evolve the role from “keeping score” to “making the score” through advanced analytic capabilities
• Institutionalize the compliance process and re-architect risk management into the business
• Redefine the nature of efficient, effective transaction processes

Setting the foundation for the new realities of the Finance function is a focused strategy that is integrated with the rest of the business. Given all of the changes impacting the Finance function, from acquisition strategies to alternative business models, the Finance strategy must be linked with a company's overall business objectives to ensure that it is providing the highest levels of value to the business partners. Archstone Consulting is sought out by many clients to assist companies in a variety of strategic Finance imperatives including:

• Overall Finance strategy development
• Assessment of alternative business models, including shared services and outsourcing/offshoring
• Finance strategy facilitation

Once an organization’s Finance strategy is set, the organization structure is typically the next foundational element to address. In a cost-competitive environment, many organizations have failed to garner value and cost savings from an organizational perspective—Historical management layers and spans of control are not optimized; titling proliferation has created unnecessary “fat” in the Finance structure and added additional cost from a compensation perspective; positions and competencies are not clear, resulting in complex career pathing.

Trends in Finance Organization Design

• Finance organization is shifting from functional specialists to business partners with other areas of the organization
• Business unit finance is moving towards a more strategic role with elevated analytical skill-sets
• Education and training for Finance executives enterprise-wide are the responsibility of Corporate Finance
• Shared services have been created with concentrations of specialized functional expertise to process high-volume transactions

Archstone Consulting is a leader in crafting the future Finance function.  In the last several years, more and more companies have asked us to help them improve the effectiveness of the overall Finance organization structure. Our Finance Organization Design offerings include:

• Finance organization design
• Competency model development
• Job profile and role development
• Finance employee development program development