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By
Michael R. Sutcliff
Editor and Global Managing Partner
for Accenture's Finance and Performance Management Service Line
Welcome to the
first volume of ideas, points of view, vendor profiles, and company
case studies from the CFO Project with Montgomery Research. Competitive
Financial Operations is designed to provide insights for finance
executives interested in creating transaction processing and performance
reporting solutions that are efficient and effective on a global
scale.
We believe this
material will be useful to finance executives striving to move beyond
operational efficiency, to create organizations capable of providing
robust business analysis, and in acting as companywide business
advisors. Our next research project, Business Analytics and Performance
Management, will build on the content in this report and demonstrate
how competitive financial operations can be leveraged to create
these value-focused analytic and performance management capabilities.
Our experience
suggests that it is not possible to build high value finance and
performance management capabilities on top of inefficient and cumbersome
transaction processing solutions. Well designed and executed business
processes related to transaction processing, controls, consolidations,
and reporting, are prerequisites to insightful analytics and management
review. The quality, timeliness, and completeness of information
created through Competitive Financial Operations provides a foundation
for more advanced capabilities.
The material
in Competitive Financial Operations is comprehensive in scope. It
describes current thinking related to leveraging ERP investments,
managing the financial supply chain, the application of e-commerce
technologies, emerging trends in shared services and outsourcing,
rapid close, reporting processes, and issues related to transaction
processing and financial reporting solutions. These topics are top
of mind as companies continue to focus on creating highly efficient
cost competitive business processes in a constantly changing business
environment.
The business
models tested during the dot-com boom provide a series of lessons
in how transactions might be initiated, processed, and confirmed
between business partners. While not all of the ideas tested merit
implementation, we believe that many of the emerging technologies
hold promise for improvements in basic transaction processing and
financial reporting.
ERP and best-of-breed
software vendors are constantly delivering new technologies to reduce
the cost and cycle times associated with capturing, processing,
and reporting business events. The client case studies and vendor
white papers included in this report provide insight into these
trends and emerging capabilities.
Additional integration
across supply chains, increased focus on customer relationship management,
and continued movement toward global business models creates continuous
pressure to enhance existing capabilities. The ideas presented by
this collection of thought-provoking papers will stimulate your
thinking and drive actions toward successful results.
On behalf of
Accenture, I wish you all the best in building the next generation
of capabilities required to compete effectively and create shareholder
value.
Michael
R. Sutcliff
Accenture
Read
the Keynote Address by Michael R. Sutcliff: Building
World-Class Finance and Performance Management Capabilities
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