What is Operational Finance And What Does It Do?
The finance organization is only as strong as its foundation. That’s why we’ve built a practice that excels in its focus on core operational processes such as order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, and more—foundational elements for enabling top-line business strategies. Operational finance has only come to the forefront in the past few years, but it is crucial for companies looking to remain competitive. And we’ve built it to be an extension of your organization—translating finance and accounting language into simple, straightforward explanations.
By doing so, we help reduce the chance of missteps and lost opportunities. We’re often thought of as “the other CFO” because we excel in providing financial strategy and advice that helps organizations achieve their goals. It’s a role that is crucial to any company or organization—large or small—that relies on maximizing resources for growth.
Role of Finance
We partner with the business to provide financial intelligence that helps identify opportunities and risks in a company’s operations. We understand how all aspects of your financial processes interact with each other, from forecasting and budgeting through to finance reporting and regulatory requirements.
We stay on top of emerging trends—such as mobile payment technologies or alternative capital providers—working closely with management to anticipate challenges and identify new growth opportunities for our clients.
Faster Accounting Cycles
One of the ways we support a client’s growth strategy is by providing better, more efficient internal controls. We streamline processes and remove redundancies to speed up accounting cycles and reduce errors.
In our experience, finance executives who provide operational finance insight also help companies avoid problems that stem from insufficient resources—or a lack of understanding about a particular process within a department or across the enterprise.
Greater Emphasis on Risk Management
Many of our clients put greater emphasis on risk management as part of their overall business strategy, and we’re able to help them meet those challenges.
We aim to create a finance organization that is well-positioned to support future growth by helping companies lay out a clear path toward flexibility and agility. We place such an emphasis on adopting new technologies that we expand the way your company defines what it means for technology and operational excellence to go hand in hand.
Reliance on Real-Time Data
One of the ways to accomplish this is by increasing our clients’ reliance on real-time data to provide immediate insight into opportunities for improvement.
Operational finance has only come to the forefront in the past few years, but it is crucial for companies looking to remain competitive. The operational CFO helps drive business strategy execution by understanding how company processes work at a granular level. An effective operational CFO also works to identify potential negative impacts before they can derail progress.
Fewer Manual Processes
With so many of our clients, we focus on streamlining and automating manual processes to reduce costs and errors and free up valuable resources. By working with an operational finance organization, companies can ensure they’re making the most of every resource—sooner rather than later.
An Emphasis on New Skills
As more companies recognize the value of operational finance, their resources are stretched even thinner. That’s why they are looking for new ways to stay competitive—and why our clients place such a strong emphasis on new skills and knowledge.
We partner with clients to help them create an environment where employees are equipped with the right information at the right time. We also help them keep their team members interested by offering new learning opportunities that will sharpen existing skills, as well as expand capabilities.
What does operational finance do?
By bringing a more holistic perspective of how the organization operates to support business strategy execution, operational CFOs are key to helping companies maintain sustainable growth. An operational financial leader is a financial professional who is not just focused on crunching numbers, but develops a more holistic understanding of how the organization operates.
Operational CFOs have a firmer grasp of what cash flow numbers actually mean because of their in-depth knowledge of your company’s systems and processes. Also, they have a strong grasp of accounting and financial reporting, operational risk, and other accounting functions. Such leadership skills can make a world of difference when it comes to the long-term success of the enterprise.
