As we’ve been discussing recently, the primary objective of any financial transformation project is to achieve process improvements that produce higher quality financial information with fewer resources.

As the chart below shows, top performing businesses who have achieved transformation tend to spend over 50% less on processes. They also spend far less time closing and consolidating than average performing businesses that have failed to reform and modernize their approach.

That’s the theory, but for the majority of organizations there are still big questions over what they’re really trying to achieve with a financial transformation.

In our latest publication – Enabling Financial Transformation Through Technology – this shortfall in understanding is addressed by showing what the ‘before and after’ of financial transformation really looks like.

For example, many companies have multiple point solutions and are, by-and-large, still using disconnected desktop applications to try and manage the process (Excel, email, etc.). Typically, they also rely on highly-fragmented, manual record-to-report (R2R) processes and lack automation and collaboration across the R2R cycle.

You’ll also discover why the transformational ‘nirvana’ for these companies should be based around measures (and technology) that enables a single data source, one financial app, full global collaboration through the cloud and centralized decision making.

Of course, all this may not be achievable right away, but that shouldn’t deter you from starting. The key is to remember process improvement is the objective and then work hard to identify what can be done to achieve this. For example, if you have multiple ERPs, look to see how you can use integration to enable process improvement without the need to move everything onto a single instance. With every step you take, the gains in terms of cost and efficiency will all help along the journey.