Mastering finance in businessThe role and impact of financial management on strategy, operations, and business performance |
Deloitte recently benchmarked financial management capabilities of over 70 global manufacturing/product-based companies and business units headquartered in the America, Asia Pacific and EMEA regions. Key findings from this benchmarking study are presented in the new research report entitled “Mastering finance in business: The role and impact of financial management on strategy, operations, and business performance.” The study focuses on how companies can use finance to strategically improve business performance. Deloitte has identified leading global companies as “finance masters” who have found methodologies to apply finance to business transformation in a much more comprehensive, consistent, and analytic way.
Deloitte’s research suggests companies need to go beyond the core finance capabilities of steward and operator to leverage finance capabilities as strategist and catalysts. The analysis unveils strong linkage between the maturity of finance capabilities and business performance. The finance masters are outperforming their peers in all business priorities:
- Revenue growth
- Operating margins and profitability
- Return on capital/assets
- Return to shareholders
The finance masters consistently demonstrate following three steps in transforming business through finance:
- Design: Invest in finance from a business perspective. Goals and plans for improving finance capabilities should be determined from the perspective of business strategy and performance management instead of the single pursuit of finance-process efficiency or compliance requirements.
- Develop: Lay a finance foundation for enterprise transformation. Without solid reporting and compliance capabilities, finance is unlikely to gain the trust of business managers.
- Exploit: Identify and prioritize high-impact areas of the business to determine which to improve first.
Read the press release.
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Mastering finance in business
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