The role of finance is not limited to ensuring planned budgets are adhered to.
Transformation is always about ambitious goals and action plans. However, merely completing tasks does not automatically translate into tangible results. In order to change for the better, you need to be able to turn the insights you start generating into subsequent action.
Therefore, support from the finance department is needed. Only this way can sources of value be identified and any leakage tackled. Monitoring of progress is key for informing any further discussions about how to continue with transformation efforts.
Finance must have its say
Financial professionals should be involved if the company transformation is to continue. They need to collaborate with other leaders. They can track value generation, which makes them central participants in important decisions on any transformation initiatives. They need to guide the focus of others.
Finance teams should also try to simplify matters and not provide too much data, which would only be overwhelming and not very helpful.
What can financial professionals do to support transformative discussions?
- Present conclusions, not whole analyses
- Use financial data only as a source of insights and recommendations
- Connect findings to specific performance issues or new opportunities
The cfo.com website describes how a retail company started using a standard one-page template for summarising any proposals connected to transformation. A decision log was also included. That way, any discussions of transformation initiatives were within a frame that was consistent even across different levels of the company as a whole.
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