Making business partnering work

Many have described the role of finance in the past as helping the business to understand the financial implications of operational decisions. This remains true, but there are additionally new perspectives: helping the business to understand the operational decisions required to improve its financial position.

In today's tough economic climate this is bringing pressure for CFOs and their teams to provide quicker and better quality management information, improved forecasting accuracy and proactivity to help the business optimise cash and working capital. To provide these critical insights, finance staff needs to be at the heart of business decisions and they should be working in close partnership with the business and other senior decision makers, to help make informed decisions. However, only in a few companies is finance achieving its full potential in strategic planning support.

For finance to become part of the DNA of the organisation it needs to become more of a discipline across the entire business rather than being restricted to something done by people in the finance function itself. This not only requires the CFO to identify the right people, skills and roles to drive the change but also for there to be a genuine effort for ongoing honest and regular co-operation and dialogue across the business.

To find out more about how to make business partnering work, read 'Adding up or adding value?'