WORLD ACADEMY OF INFORMATICS AND MANAGEMENT SCIENCES
ISSN : 2278-1315
Applying for impact: to guide actions and help ensure
perform well in the ‘questioning’ broader role. In the
organizations achieve the required impact, they enable and
‘developing solutions’ and ‘deploying solutions’ arenas, there
use control systems, such as strategic planning, budgeting,
are some lone finance function innovators. The reason many
performance measures and performance reviews.
still operate only in the ‘reporting’ and ‘questioning’ spaces is
because few finance functions currently have the capacity and
Acumen: the finance function ensures it assembles valuable
capability to move to the right-hand roles.
information to inform the consideration of subsequent
proposals – information ranging from reports to analysis of
Reporting: a trusted source providing data integrity
the outcomes achieved or experiences gained from relevant
initiatives.
The finance function is usually the most trusted source of
information in an organization because it can ensure the
Together, these basic activities are the backbone of the
integrity of the data used in its analysis and reporting. Its
changing mandate and are performed regularly by finance
professional objectivity means the function provides
professionals under the broad finance function roles.
information that’s less likely to be subject to bias than the
views of others in the business. One interviewee described it
as “sanity over vanity”.
2. Broad Finance Roles
Insight into the broad finance roles came from an interview
with a CFO at one of the Big Four accounting firms, who
explained:
“In the future, the finance function will need to be more
involved in developing solutions with the rest of the
organization. This is because the function initiates the root
cause analysis, and has the understanding that links through
to developing solutions. Once the finance function is
working with others, it must also move into deploying
solutions. Both of these broad areas will require a change in
skills focus, from technical and business to problem-solving
and change management.”
This insight expresses clearly how the changing mandate is
expanding from a core accounting role to one which
involves developing and deploying solutions for an
organization. In a diagrammatical format, the broader roles
of the finance function sit beneath the umbrella terms of
‘reporting’, ‘questioning’, ‘developing solutions’ and
‘deploying solutions’.
Figure 2: Broad Finance Roles
The CFO of a UK government agency revealed that it’s the
finance function that’s expected to assemble the information
the agency is obliged to disclose under the UK’s Freedom of
Information Act. This is a clear demonstration of confidence
in the information provided by finance functions.
Questioning: a commercial analyst that enables values
Finance functions are usually the masters of producing
reports. However, these products are then handed to others to
debate and discuss. The changing mandate needs finance
functions to move from being reporting factories to providing
experiences that wrap around the reports they produce.
The analysis in most reporting seldom generates insight alone.
More often, it raises questions. The commercial curiosity,
questioning and analysis by dimension (for example, by
relationship, product, channel or segment) that the finance
function prompts, can identify opportunities to innovate or
reduce risk. Questioning also initiates collaborative
conversations with colleagues around the organization,
leading to identification of root causes and opportunities to
improve performance.
The finance function’s questioning role involves constant
horizon-scanning and alerting the business to strategic
opportunities or threats.
Once we had discussed the four broad roles of finance
(Figure 2) in our interviews and roundtable, the research
enabled us to plot finance function capabilities. The research
revealed that most finance functions are excellent at
reporting and the activities associated with this, especially
when working in isolation. However, moving from left to
right through the broad roles, finance functions tend to
perform less well. Functions that have built up their business
and analytical skills to focus on root cause analysis tend to
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Developing solutions: a subject matter expert providing
stewardship Finance functions have subject matter experts in
their teams to guide strategic decision-making and decisions
about major investments, initiatives or strategy. However,
they are rarely seen at the debating table. This is a shame; as
stewards with professional objectivity, they are well-
positioned to question constructively. They also provide
transparency
and
can
facilitate
organization-wide
conversations to generate innovative solutions.
Quattrone, Busco, Scapens and Giovannoni recommend a:
“Return to being a cross-functional means of users’
engagement and motivations by forcing different stakeholders
to take part in decision-making processes to overcome the
silos mentality which has relegated the finance function to a
mere provider of information rather than an active player in
such processes”.
ENDEAVOR 2019 | WAIMS ACADMIC PRESS
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