The transformation of finance creates more opportunities than threats for CIMA professionals.

AuthorGrant, Gordon
PositionIn business - Grwowth of employee recruitment

Businesses around the globe can recruit the best people in India, China, eastern Europe or anywhere else in the world where their business or knowledge process outsourcing needs can be met. Now that leading companies have well and truly woken up to the opportunities presented by technology and globalisation to give them access to similar resources, the last remaining bastion of competitive advantage could be the quality of their decision-making.

This is one of the main conclusions of "Improving decision-making in organisations", the latest report to emerge from CIMA Innovation and Development. But the clear inference and key message to be drawn from this finding is that, if decision-making represents the remaining link in the value chain that can enable superior returns, then organisations need to seize the opportunity to transform their finance functions now. In fact, many companies are putting their competitive position at risk by failing to transform their finance functions to help improve decision-making at every level.

Members of CIMA's Improving Decision-Making in Organisations Forum include representatives from the Linde Group, KimberlyClark, Rolls-Royce, Tesco, Unilever and the Department for Work and Pensions. They have shared fascinating individual case-study materials and insights based on their own experiences.

Many of the forum members have also taken the chances presented by the transformation of finance to engage the function to improve decision-making throughout their organisations. They expect their finance and accounting departments not only to operate efficiently and produce accurate financial accounts and useful management information, but also to work closely or "partner" with the business and help improve decision-making.

To quote from the report: "High-performing companies usually have high-performing finance functions. Although the causality has not been proven with academic rigour, the correlation is clear."

The good news is that, although the transformation of finance may threaten traditional roles in the provision of management information, it also provides exciting opportunities in the heartland of management accountancy: value...

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