Finance function efficiency

Although the cost of finance as a proportion of revenue for most companies has fallen over the last decade, the economic downturn applied fresh pressure to the function.

As finance looks towards a future of doing more with less and with increased compliance demands also threatening to create sustained cost challenges, finance needs to find more and more innovative ways to ensure process and organisational efficiency.

Now is the time for finance to be helping business understand the operational decisions required to improve its financial position and undoubtedly, CFOs should be taking a leading role in this.

The CFO should be focusing once again on the function's ability to perform tasks in a timely and cost effective manner, how simplified and standardised processes that leverage technology might impact the business, if the elimination of non-core activities through shared services/outsourcing could be of benefit, and the appropriate investment in people and cultural change required to underpin it all.