Finance 2030: Four Imperatives for the Next Decade
The trade-off between cost reduction and increased effectiveness of the finance function is a false choice. Leading finance departments are guardians of enterprise value creation, demonstrating stewardship of their own spend by lowering absolute costs and shifting work towards more value-added activities.
We have analyzed the finance functions of hundreds of companies to understand how cost and effectiveness have evolved over the past ten years. After controlling for differences in sector, scale, and geographic footprint, several findings emerged:
• Finance organizations have, on average, decreased their cost by 29 percent.
• The most efficient cohort of finance departments (“finance leaders”) achieved similar cost improvement to the level shown by average performers—an impressive feat given that the finance leaders started from a lower cost base.
