FINANCE 2.0

Leading organisations require Finance Functions that do more than just close the books and provide good governance and controls. Best in class Finance Functions use their investment in technology to add significant value to their organisations.

World Class Finance functions become trusted business partners in their organisations. Working closely with Business Leaders, Finance Directors provide insight and advice that enables the business to achieve competitive advantage. 

Finance functions are best placed to understand the return on marketing investment, or where inefficiencies in a supply chain exist, or the markets that possess the most favourable conditions for expansion.

The journey to becoming world class begins with getting the basics right. Financial Reporting excellence provides the foundations for taking the organisation to the next level. 

Push-button closing, standardized global reports, run-time information are just the beginning.

Having achieved these standards, a Finance Function is able to analyse data and provide powerful insights to the Commercial arms of the business.

It is possible to achieve these standards if Finance Leaders tackle a number of strategic questions about their role, their structure and the way they work. 

These include:

• What is our vision and future destination as a Finance Function?
• How do we bring new insight to the business? 
• What are the core processes we need to excel at? How can we do these most efficiently with consistency and accuracy?
• What are the capabilities our people need to develop?
• How do we share knowledge better and more quickly?
• What measures do we need in place?
• What IT tools will best support us?

Leading organisations have implemented strategies such as ‘finance shared services’, combining finance processes into regional or global centres of excellence. They may have implemented enterprise level technology solutions. However, many of these organisations, having made huge investments in their Finance Organisation and Technology over the years, have yet to see the benefits to their bottom line.

Ludic have developed, alongside our Finance Expert Partners a suite of methodologies designed to maximize the return on the investment in the Finance Organisation. We assist Finance Functions to achieve Finance 2.0 standards and accelerate their implementation of world-class practices. 

Finance 2.0 is designed to enable and support the transitions required across multiple stakeholders, multiple geographies and multiple systems. 

This is never an easy task and requires a multi-disciplinary, whole systems approach. The cultural aspect of transition is as important as the socio-technical aspects (such as processes, organisation, knowledge and technology) and to add to this complexity they all have to be dealt with simultaneously.

We achieve this using multiple and simultaneous tools and techniques. We provide the transformation teams with everything they require to make the transition. This is achieved using sophisticated design events, collaboration platforms, media and enabling tools. These very large groups of stakeholders are equipped to successfully navigate the organisation to day-to-day excellence.

Ludic’s Collaborative Production processes, Large Scale Collaborative Decision Making Tools, Media Communication Expertise and Partnerships with Expert Knowledge Providers – enables these large scale shifts to be made, and to minimize the costs and risks to the business.

These tools have been proven with the world’s largest organisations and finance transformation efforts. Our client’s call these tools astonishing. We call them Finance 2.0. 

Phase 1: Design Research 

The Design research phase understands the challenges in the organisation and discovers the needs of a world-class finance function for the business. It establishes the Transition Design Community and the goals for the programme.

Phase 2: Collaborative Blueprint Design 

A three-day Design Event focused on creating the blueprint for the future finance organisation. The blueprint contains the vision, roadmap and plan to transform to a world class finance function. The participants of the Design Event are key stakeholders from the business, finance, IT, HR and other relevant areas.  Subject matter experts and best in class knowledge provide external know-how. This group of up to 100 people work together over an intense three day period, using accelerated decision-making techniques, to collaboratively create their blueprint for the future.

Phase 3: Media Based Transformation Tooling

The next phase focuses on scaling up the transformation effort. With a clear future vision and roadmap, the design team now needs to engage the wider finance function and other stakeholders in supporting the change they have committed to.

Ludic’s Media Based Transformation (MBT) tools and methods are designed to enable and support the alignment and engagement of programme teams across multiple stakeholders, geographies and systems. 

Using sophisticated collaborative tools, MBT creates platforms and media that enable large and virtual teams to determine the work that needs to be done and to navigate them through the complexity of the transformation effort.

The production process is a very powerful tool for synthesising and aligning a large group of people. MBT uses the process of production and design thinking to work with groups who are undergoing large-scale systems transformation. The collaborative process promotes alignment and understanding about the destination, the processes, the technologies, the knowledge and the organisational roles that bring about the desired outcomes.

Finance 2.0 in action

Over the past 5 years, Ludic has worked with a number of world-leading organisations to help their Finance Functions become the world-class organisations their businesses require, for example:

Chemicals: Designing and implementing a global shared service centre finance strategy 

FMCG: Designing a regional shared service centre strategy and implementation 

Life Sciences: Designing the future finance organisation and optimising the existing shared services operations

Soft Drinks & Beverages: Designing the model finance organisation, achieving world class excellence