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12 Jul 2011
ACCOUNTANCY INSIGHT and strategy is more valuable than the more traditional focus on transactions and costs, a new report has concluded.
CIMA's survey, From Efficiency to Effectiveness: Transforming the Finance Delivery Mix, revealed finance professionals who consider their organisation "high performing" focus more on management support and are strong when it comes to transformed and collaborative finance functions.
Further reading
By contrast, less successful respondents continued to place firm emphasis on traditional accounting operations.
Shantanu Ghosh, senior vice-president of Practices, Solutions and Transitions at report sponsor Genpact, said: "Many finance functions are evolving to provide more high-value insight and strategy rather than just focusing on accounting transactions and costs."
Despite cost considerations, the survey shows that 60% of participants use or plan to use external finance services in a bid to add capacity and boost the effectiveness of financial processes.
Paul Blackburn, group financial controller of GlaxoSmithKline, said process management specialist Genpact had helped GSK improve its audit and increase the effectiveness of its services.
CIMA surveyed 3,000 finance and senior managers around the world, considering how finance services will be delivered in future and the way in which professionals can help meet company objectives through management support.
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Briefings
If budgeting is to have any value at all, it needs a radical overhaul. In today's dynamic marketplace, budgeting can no longer serve as a company's only management system; it must integrate with and support dedicated strategy management systems, process improvement systems, and the like. In this paper, Professor Peter Horvath and Dr Ralf Sauter present what's wrong with the current approach to budgeting and how to fix it.
In this white paper CCH provide checklists to help accountants and finance professionals both in practice and in business examine these issues and make plans. Also includes a case study of a large commercial organisation working through the first year of mandatory iXBRL filing.
AccountancyAgeInsight is a frequently updated resource centre for finance professionals, offering a free and easy-to-use digital library of briefings, white papers and other information resources. 
Visitor comments Add your comment
Data + Insight = Information
Not a surprising finding...Noah Barsky and I penned an article almost a decade ago in which we argued that a "new accounting equation" was needed for the 21st Century. This new equation (data+insight=information) highlights the value that individuals can add through their insights to information creation. Traditional accountants focus on data creation...today's accountants must transform this data by their insights into information that managers can actually use for decision-making.
Posted by: Anthony H. Catanach Jr., 12 Jul 2011 | 12:40
Communication is Needed too!
Many of today's accountants lack the interpersonal or soft skills required to convert data+insight into information for their 'decision support' stakeholders. This is the key area finance leaders need to focus on in developing their team's capability to support "Strategy" and improve the service delivery.
Posted by: Stuart Dinnis, 14 Jul 2011 | 00:32