Increasing Organizational Value Through a Financial Shared Services Model

According to Gartner, over 90% of CFOs plan to increase their investment in digital capabilities, signaling a push to standardize and automate a greater portion of finance process cycles. A finance shared services model provides a platform to automate up to 90% of journal entries, reducing cycle time to 5 days for monthly close, according to APQC benchmarks. It’s an attractive value proposition, fueling one of three triggers driving more organizations to transition from centralized services to shared.

In our September 22 webinar, “Organizational Approaches to Finance Shared Services Models,” RGP’s Janis Parthun and Ellen Class, VPs of Project Consulting Services and Finance Transformation, and Tolu Akin, Senior Director of Finance Transformation, will dig deeper into these driving forces and how one client successfully made the move.

Taking a Growth-Oriented Approach to Finance Services

As organizations mature, a CFO’s focus naturally shifts from establishing the foundations of reporting and governance to creating value through risk management, optimization and deeper insights. Beyond the immediate benefits of reducing costs through increased organizational transparency and accountability for resource usage, transforming from a centralized to a shared services model provides CFOs with increased opportunities to analyze and forecast operational business activities for smarter decision-making.

Transforming Finance with an Informed Process Framework

Before implementing a shared services model, it’s important that organizations map out the phases of their approach and associated work streams, along with how they’ll prioritize these phases based on their current level of maturity and immediate business goals. For example, a more mature organization (or one with a pressing business need to address) might choose to design and implement new processes for existing procedures, skipping the traditional planning and assessment phases—a roadmap approach commonly referred to as “lift & shift.” This is one of three approaches covered in RGP’s webinar.

Aligning Stakeholders & Teams Around a Path Forward

A change of this scope and scale must be led by a motivated sponsor who can act as the project champion, set the vision, and bring others along. A successful function will require a well-trained team with strong digital competencies. A tangential benefit of finance transformation is an enhanced ability to attract and retain highly sought-after talent. Research shows that Millennial and Gen Z employees, digital natives, gravitate toward companies embracing technology, offering the opportunity to do interesting work (often remote) and contribute in a meaningful way.

This is one among many topics we’ll be exploring in our webinar, including:

• Triggers for finance transformation
• Process framework considerations when deploying shared services
• Roadmap approaches for the transition
• How one global company made the change

Register to attend our upcoming webinar, “Organizational Approaches to Finance Shared Services Models,” on September 22, 2022.