Finance Transformation for a Life Sciences Company
Challenge
Inefficiencies in finance processes leading to dissatisfaction among management and other stakeholders. Finance team as a whole was not acting as a business partner supporting other stakeholders and thus was more seen as an accounting function.
Takeover of a foreign subsidiary by the Indian Company complicated the challenges already faced.
Two different finance teams acting in silos across the organisation led to issues like duplication of work, multiple processes, inefficiencies due to lack of responsibilities, co-ordinations, geographical challenges ultimately hindering the common goal of the organisation.
Delayed billings and month close due to manual activities and issues in upstream processes.
MIS reports were delayed due to deficiency in structured planning and inconsistent process
How we helped
Detailed study was conducted to understand the time spent by each team member of the finance team on various activities assigned. Discussion and understanding of the upstream and downstream processes incorporating the same in our study for effective solutions.
Feedback from all the stakeholders was collated to gauge their views on the role of finance function by way of stakeholder analysis.
Each Finance activity was put to test through Effectiveness-efficiency analysis to assess which activities need significant improvement, which activities can be done away with and which activities can be outsourced.
Provided recommendations & time-bound roadmap for on transforming Finance function into a Business Partner Function that would to encompass the areas of Financial Planning & Analysis, Credit Controlling and Project Controlling among other things.
Provided recommendations & time bound roadmap for automating the tasks that consume significant bandwidth of the team for the outcomes that are not commensurate with the efforts spent, both quantitative and qualitative.
Provided recommendations & time bound roadmap for leveraging the features of existing ERP that would enhance the controlling function and reduce the efforts spent.
For every recommendation, we performed Cost-Value- Effort analysis, based on which the recommendations were prioritized for implementation.
Performed high-level skill mapping of each member of the Finance team to understand the roles / areas where they can contribute best.
Proposed new structure for Finance function that would be lean and at the same time would be able to perform wider range of function more effectively and efficiently.
At an overall level, our recommendations opened up a possibility of time saving potential of upto 71% that can be put to better use in more meaningful activities.
Benefits
Our engagement set the platform to transform Finance function into a lean & business-centric function.
The inefficiencies brought about by the manual processes, further compounded by geographical distance & multiple processes for same activity, were addressed by introducing uniform, effective & efficient processes and synergy of operations.
Through our engagement, the organization was able to improve Finance function productivity by ~60%, thereby saving costs and deploy resources on more meaningful engagements for the organization.
Our efforts and in-depth analysis of the transformation programme was appreciated by the COO and also the Board Members.
