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A Finance Business Partnering Journey - or is it just common sense?
Posted by Helen
Lumb - May 27 2013
Many years ago when I left a Big 4 accountancy practice and took my first step into industry as a company accountant, little did I realise I was going to embark on a journey that I would see as enriching and fulfilling and allow me to play a significant part in adding value to business performance.
I was fortunate to join an organisation that actively encouraged their finance staff to get “out” into the business. The purpose of this was to develop “experts” in a particular area of the business but who also had finance skills. Their job was to integrate with the business managers and become a link with the finance function for the Business Director.
It was fun and rewarding. I looked after everything from Production areas to Logistics to HR functions. I always reported into the finance function but I had excellent relations with my “other” director. After 12 years of working in that business, I truly understood its purpose, its business model, I was well respected in my “areas”, knew all the managers and usually attended their department meetings, knew their budgets and projections inside out and supported them to the best of my ability.
My journey started in 1992, long before the idea of “finance business partnering” became a trend or finance transformations became popular. Was the company I joined well ahead of its time? Or is all this just common sense?
I have always taken this method of working along with me on my journey and promoted it in any finance functions I have subsequently run and developed. It is probably worth mentioning that I have spent the majority of my time working since those days with small, high growth entrepreneurial businesses and I am very hands on and love to get stuck in. I encourage people to get out into the business, understand what the business does, ideally experience it for themselves and add value at every turn. I encourage business department heads to embrace these finance professionals and use them to the full. It is a well respected statistic that businesses that have high performing finance functions have high performing businesses. Finance is a service function and its customer is the business.
Despite all of this, we still talk about finance transformations, we still have SME’s who are yet to embrace finance personnel and see them as an unnecessary overhead, we still have finance professionals who are stereotyped and expected to sit in the back office. Yet so much more is on offer and the value speaks for itself.
Over the years, I have spent a great deal of time reflecting on this approach, read with interest, Big 4 and Accountancy Body White Papers on Finance Business Partners and how to succeed in this and formulated my own ideas on how to make this a success using theory and experience.
Today’s economic environment is a challenge for small and large businesses alike. Many global organisations have successfully transformed their finance functions and have developed integrated business partners who serve as financial and business experts, delivering and adding value. 99.1% of businesses in the UK are made up of the Small, Medium, Enterprise (SME) and they account for approximately 48% of the UK’s turnover. They are the bedrock of economy and essential for UK recovery and growth. I believe by embracing and adopting these same methods of working, but adapted to the size of the organisation, they can not only survive but thrive in today’s tough economy.
Over the next few weeks, I with the help of some colleagues, will be writing a series of articles that will share experiences and good practice on how to bring successful finance business partnering into any organisation, regardless of size and demonstrate its value. I will also be inviting guest bloggers who have significant experience/ skills to add their thoughts into the mix.
Please read my blogs, give me your comments and feedback, follow me on Twitter where I will post when I have added new information or send me your email address to Helen.lumb@indigoperformance.co.uk and I will contact you when a new post has been added.
Helen Lumb is director and co-