Cost is often regarded as the more complex part of analysing business profitability, mainly because it’s difficult to determine how a given expense directly contributes to the value created.
Cost transparency aims to understand how resources are deployed to perform activities that create value. For example, improving client experiences to increase revenue or engaging technology teams to develop applications that enhance productivity.
How profitable are each of my clients and what’s driving this? This is a question many leaders in the Financial Services Industry (‘FSI’) ask themselves … some say it’s the holy grail of cost transparency. Having this insight would allow organisations to make more informed decisions around where to deploy resources to deliver the greatest returns.
For many this is still a long way off, however for a few, this is a working reality offering up considerable competitive advantage.
Our latest paper What's driving my cost base? Realising insight through cost transparency, consolidates interviews and conversations with leaders from organisations across FSI.
Our report contains critical insights from discussing approaches to cost transparency, common pain points, regulatory changes, increased disclosure burdens, and proposing key foundational principles that achieve positive results in the face of economic headwinds.
We observe that FSI organisations experience similar pain points around cost transparency:
Successful firms embark on “intelligent design” before progressing to enterprise-level builds. When executed well, cost transparency can radically transform an organisation, driving greater collaboration and delivering meaningful cost base reductions.
Contact a member of our team today to find out how we can help you unlock insights around your organisation’s cost base.