Insights
Finance should drive decisions, not just provide insight
What really is the purpose of Finance business partnering? I’ve been testing this question in recent months by asking all the CFOs and FDs I meet through our consulting work. The most common answer I get is “To provide ‘Insight’ to the business from the information...
Is that a Monkey on your Back?
“I need some more details before I can make a decision.” As a Finance professional, how often have you heard this from one of your business colleagues? I’m going to guess pretty frequently. One of the biggest complaints I hear from finance business partners is that...
Which skills do finance business partners need?
Most Finance Directors say that having the right people with the right skills is their number one priority for delivering business value from Finance. Yet, in our experience not many FDs identify the specific capabilities needed by their finance business partners,...
The 3 Ingredients for Successful Finance Business Partnering
“Do I need to hire a whole new team to make my Finance organisation more effective at business partnering?” It’s surprising how many Finance Directors ask me this question. In my experience, business partnering is a lot more complicated than this. A little bit of...
Do your Finance teams write Escalator Commentary?
Does the commentary in your finance performance reports sound like “sales are down x% and costs are up y%”? If so, then your Finance teams are writing ‘Escalator Commentary’. Many management accountants become obsessed with the need to write some sort...
“I’m not interested in news-readers in Finance … I need journalists”.
"I'm not interested in news-readers in Finance...I need journalists." The Commercial Director of a large company once told me she needs “Journalists in Finance, not News-Readers”. So I recently interviewed a number of journalists from UK national newspapers,...
