How finance partnering adds more value to the business
The overriding purpose of finance is to deliver long term value to shareholders.
According to finance leader Maria Koliago, pivotal to achieving that aim is a strong, engaged, and professional team.
Speaking at the World Finance Forum in London, Maria gave her advice on how to maximize the value of finance through strong partnering.
Finance fundamentals
The role of the CFO is to ensure the finance team is supporting the business to deliver market beating results.
Part of that process is ensuring that performance is sustainable and actively improving lives in society, as well as delivering year on year growth in share prices and dividends.
There are six areas a CFO needs to master in order to achieve these targets;
- Successful business partnering
- Taking a leading role major system & process changes
- Maintaining robust controls & reporting discipline
- Ensuring strong corporate governance & risk management
- Leveraging specialist skills in Finance, Tax, Treasury, M&A & IR
- Effectively developing talent
Future Considerations define business partners as “members of a function e.g. Finance, IT, HR, Legal, External Relations, who act as a connector, a bridge, linking functions and business units (at different levels sometimes including sometimes at C-suite level) to ensure that the technical expertise they have to offer is placed within the real and current concerns of the business to create value.”
Maria explains that these partners are there to orchestrate both external and internal stakeholders, with major themes the finance organization is trying to address.
To be successfully delivered, there has to be a proactive ‘can do’ attitude and commitment to embracing company values, showing both leadership and integrity in pursuing integration throughout the organization.
Pillars of success
Maria outlined her four pillars of success that enable great business partnering:
Right focus
This is about going into the details behind business assumptions: what are you expecting to achieve, what’s the desired outcome, is it a short or long term positive?
Getting a solid idea of what answers you want to the above, you can then decide at which stage finance should get involved and to what extent.
Right skills
Being a competent accountant is not enough to take finance to the next level and be a good business partner. Expert-level knowledge is required to formulate a sophisticated approach.
Building on a strong financial skill base is a good start, and then put significant emphasis on upskilling commercial and analytical expertise, alongside business acumen.
Creativity and innovation are also necessary to push boundaries. Maria’s top tips were to lose the fear of being judged, and go for it!
Another vital skill set is what Maria dubbed the ‘techno geeks’. These people will allow you to get the most from AI, and make smart investments in your tech stack.
Investing in soft skills and developing managerial talent is also important, as the mindset and culture instilled into an organization can help energize and motivate a team to deliver great results.
Right culture
The backbone to good culture is cultivating a collaborative approach. Enabling others to feel confident in making decisions at all levels can stop blockages in decision making processes.
Maria highlighted the importance of a challenge culture, where no one in the team should be afraid to challenge any other member. We wrote more on challenge culture right here. (link to optimized culture piece)
Right organization
There will be change. It’s a matter of when, not if. Ensure your organization is ready for it, and gets a head start by embracing the digital disruption and automation acceleration that has occurred (and hastened) during the pandemic.
Operate as one body, with dynamism underlying the company’s principles.
Finance needs to become immersed in the business. Establishing centers of excellence as part of the business partnering process will help aid this.
As the partnership matures, these centers will become bigger in scope. Their operational part will become slightly cheaper, and they can help nurture skills further.
