Overview
According to the recent 2008 IBM Global CFO Study, one-third of CFOs and senior finance executives stated they are ineffective at measuring and monitoring business performance. The study of 1,200 CFOs suggests that current financial management models lack the effectiveness and flexibility to accommodate the needs of global enterprises from a business performance analysis and risk management perspective.
The IBM Finance Transformation Workbench is designed to accelerate the analysis of a client's finance function, and the development of clear and concise finance transformation opportunities, supported by the application of IBM's world-class finance function solution offerings. The FT Workbench integrates IBM's leading thinking and Intellectual Property (IP) on finance transformation into one analytical tool that:
- Addresses the complete CFO agenda
- Applies world-class finance function principles to root cause analysis and resolution
- Identifies a roadmap of initiatives, appropriately staged and prioritized, for a change program to improve finance effectiveness
- Produces a full business case to support the change program
How can this help you? It will assist your enterprise on the path to becoming an Integrated Finance Organization (IFO). According to the IBM 2008 CFO Study, IFOs represent one in seven of the organization’s surveyed who have developed mature capabilities in business performance analysis and risk management. In fact, the IFOs in the study had revenue growth rates nearly double that of industry peers and can be more prepared for risk because they are more aware of risk.
IFOs have more mature finance capabilities addressed by four commonalities: 1) globally mandated standards, 2) standard common processes, 3) a company-wide standard chart of accounts and 4) common data definitions. Further, these organizations have made significant progress consolidating onto a common financial application platform, resulting in fewer financial data reconciliation issues and increased confidence in reported numbers.
Business challenges
- Inability to efficiently and accurately assess company financial performance
- Sub-optimal finance functions characterized by high cost of finance, financial control/risk management issues, regulatory and statutory compliance challenges (SOX, SEC reporting, IFRS)
- Underperforming finance functions and inability to determine root causes and potential solutions
- Lack of finance transformation/change/improvement strategy or lack of a clear approach and roadmap for finance function transformation
- Inability to define key measures/metrics of finance function performance to quantify current inefficiencies, and develop a business case for change
FT Workbench services that we offer
- Business pain point modeling
- Heat map analysis
- Component Business Modeling (CBM)
- IBM Benchmarking
- APQC process classification framework
- Leading finance function organization design principles and models
- Leading finance application technologies and enablers
- Business case generator to perform DCF/NPV, IRR and payback analysis for each initiative and across an entire finance transformation program
- ROI analysis (NPV, ROI, payback time)
Why IBM
The FT Workbench tool is designed to accelerate the analysis of your finance function and development of clear and concise finance transformation opportunities, supported by the application of IBM's world-class finance function solutions. The FT Workbench is an application that integrates IBM's leading thinking and IP on Finance Transformation into one analytical tool; applies world class finance function principles to root cause analysis and resolution; and is designed to address the CFO agenda and help improve effectiveness of the finance function, especially as you move towards becoming an Integrated Finance Organization.
With more than 4,100 financial management resources located across the globe, IBM has a strong record of serving as a trusted advisor to CFOs and finance leaders. Our dedicated teams of research and thought leadership professionals provide insights into the issues facing finance professionals. This help us to enabling us to offer deep finance function expertise coupled with effective technology implementation and integration capability.
We offer proven finance transformation tools and experience, such as SAP, Oracle and Cognos. IBM financial management consulting services bring strong partnerships; we are the number one SAP Consulting Provider and a leading integrator of Oracle/Hyperion applications. Our recent acquisition of Cognos has added over 200 experienced Cognos practitioners to our financial management practice.
We bring experienced IBM finance executives to meet with clients, including former CFOs, controllers and CIOs. Our consultants have worked with 75% of the global Fortune 50 and 80% of the FT 50. We frequently leverage our IBM CFO and his team to share their Finance Transformation story and lessons learned.
