Finance

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Finance is a very different world from what it was just a few years ago. Today finance functions have to look at how the whole of the organization – and beyond – impacts the bottom line.
We’ve shaped a global ecosystem of CFOs, controllers and other accounting and finance executives to help you enhance the value that you’re adding to your enterprise.

We’re inspired to ask better questions. And we work with you to create more innovative answers, collaborating across the organization, helping you improve finance and accounting processes and delivering the technology to help make it happen.

Our global connectivity means we can combine deep operational consulting capability with industry-specific leading practices. We have alliances with sector-leading businesses such as SAP, so you get the benefits of their insight. This ongoing collaboration means, together, we can support better outcomes and long-lasting results.

How we can help

Finance Process Excellence

A well-run finance process is at the core of a successful CFO. It enables innovation by freeing up scarce resources to focus on what’s important.

Yesterday’s finance transformation focused primarily on cost control, process efficiencies, and establishing the right controls and risk-management procedures. Today, it is that and much more.

Like the CFO position itself, the finance function has evolved and taken on new dimensions supporting corporate strategy, the capital agenda, growth and competitive advantage in the marketplace.

As growth has returned to the business agenda of many companies, innovation is taking the place of cost-control and efficiency as a priority for many CFOs. Leading companies recognize innovation is everyone’s responsibility, championedby the leadership team, including the CFO.

A well-run Finance process enables innovation by freeing up scarce resources to focus on important questions and solve difficult problems.

Our Finance Process Excellence offering helps drive business innovation by assisting our clients with:

  • Finance transformation programs — from a full transformation of the finance function to a transformation of interdependent processes such as budgeting and forecasting
  • Rapid assessment services, including review of reports against best practice, balanced scorecard reporting, business planning, budgeting and forecasting, and reporting of actual performance for external and internal audiences
  • Process efficiency reviews, including the design of metrics to improve process effectiveness and efficiency.
  • Technology enablement which allows the finance process to reach its full potential.

CFOs often question whether their finance staff members are fully capable of performing their duties today and are prepared for the future. They lie awake at night wondering if they fully leverage the scarce human capital in their organizations.

At Connect Options, we believe we can address this challenge.

Our People Excellence service offering makes a targeted effort to map finance’s current skill set, identify opportunities for improvement and help execute the roadmap to prepare the finance team for the future.

Our teams leverages a proven approach to:

  • Assess the current strengths and weaknesses of the finance function’s current skill set
  • Refine roles and responsibilities
  • Benchmark against leading skills expectations
  • Identify skills gaps
  • Advise on recommendations for improvement

From there, we help clients develop the learning and development capability required to invest in finance teams, prepare them for the future and sustain improvements. We also help clients define and implement the talentmanagement processes required to achieve their vision.

Learning and development is a journey, not a destination. It takes a proven, repeatable process with continuous engagement of the finance function and an advisor who knows how to get it right.

We can help finance align more closely with other functions and develop a mutual understanding of risks and opportunities.

At Connect Options we understand the controller function and what it takes to balance the books, maintain control of the financials, mitigate financial risks, drive insight and do it all with an efficient team. However, we recognize that successful finance leaders look beyond this traditional finance perspective and are collaborating more closely with other internal functions for business planning and strategic decisions — not just from a monitoring, reporting and risk management perspective.

We can help finance become a trusted business partner, bringing closer alignment between finance and other functions, and a mutual understanding of key risks and opportunities. We are also passionate about looking across industries for bestin breed practices and bringing those tools to our clients, to make them faster, smarter and with less risk.

Connect Options’s Finance Controlling Excellence offering brings together all of the key elements of an effective controllership function: people, process, policy, technology and delivery model, while promoting strong partnership between finance and the business.

We leverage our Finance Controlling Excellence offering to ensure our clients’ finance group can successfully support the strategic direction. We help clients build global target operating models, adapted from leading practices for their own uniqueness.

The journey is never over. Future delivery models are global, multifunctional and fully integrated. We help to determine your current maturity and how to transform.
Many organizations already have been implementing shared services and outsourcing in the last two decades. Finance led the way, followed by IT, focused on the handling of non-core company activities.

Tomorrow’s model for Global Business Services (GBS) is multifunctional, fully integrated, end-to-end process oriented and helps to transform your business. Typically, this is achieved through the creation of a unified GBS unit capable of managing end-to-end processes.

The move toward a Global Business Services organization is a process of evolution rather than revolution and from today’s perspective — ‘end-to-end’ Global Business Services are the end-point for this evolution. So far at least, very few companies have reached this level of integration.

Our Global Finance Delivery Excellence service offering addresses all levels on this journey: The setup of Finance Shared Services, the migration from Finance to Multifunctional and Regional Shared Services, as well as the migration from Multifunctional Shared Services to a truly ‘end-to-end’ GBS organization including Center of Excellence (CoE) structures.