FINANCE LEADERS

Lifecycle learnings to benchmark the business of finance

Briefing is carrying out a new programme of regular polling of our growing Finance Leaders community — seeking views about which business processes or policies are the highest priority for more investment or other instances of significant transformation; areas of responsibility and decision-making for driving these improvements; the impacts of inefficiency or inconsistency on realisation and overall firm performance across the work-to-cash cycle; the most common obstacles to introducing or achieving change; opportunities for introducing new or better adoption of technology that could make a difference; assessments of how effective integrations are between systems; and confidence in a consistent, accurate view of business information.

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These will span four connected themes across the financial lifecycle of a matter, and questions will connect in an attempt to shine a light on some missing links. The key point is that the stages, from inception to cash collection, are not independent. The impact of poor performance, lack of discipline, or process weakness at one stage tends to have a knock-on effect on how things are handled later in the cycle.

These research pages display aggregate results based on responses given in confidence. The first round — onboarding — was answered by 30 senior (C-level) finance leaders at firms with total headcounts over 250. 

The four stages of the research will comprise:

Onboarding — which sets the conditions for speed to revenue, early commercial clarity, and the quality of data that establishes and may govern the matter going forward.          

Matter Management — which determines whether scope, pricing and margin remain controlled during delivery, and whether the commercial intent captured at onboarding is properly enforced in practice.    

Invoicing — which exposes how value is retained, or lost, before revenue reaches the firm.          

Collection — which reveals the true realised outcome in cash received, predictability of payment, and write-offs that reduce firm profitability.        

Please reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions or suggestions relating to the project.