Finance

The dynamism, speed, and competitive nature of the business environment require that companies seek a competitive advantage. A high-performance management standard represents such an advantage by allowing clients to streamline their company and transform it into a client-oriented company.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a critical part of performance management. They serve to align companies behind goals and direction, provide clear accountability for individual and collective performance, and provide the best mechanism for incentives to achieve performance targets. In practice, defined KPIs should turn into Management Information (MI). An MI framework should be present in all firms to help them drive the business performance aligned to the strategy at all levels of management:

The unique nature of performance management and measurement allows companies to develop and implement a system that cannot be easily copied by competitors.

Typical issues that you can face:

• Management Information is:
  • produced but not used
  • too detailed to be used by management
  • insufficient for management decision making
  • incremental, due to timely evolution of the system
  • not available on time.
• How can we reduce our overall budget cycle time and deploy rolling forecasts to increase the value of our financial planning process?
• How can we automate our planning, reporting, and analytical reporting processes through standard data models and systems?
• How can we effectively align and reduce our cost structure?
• How can we improve our operational actions through the use of real-time dashboards and scorecards?
• How can we improve data integrity and increase the transparency of our management information?
• How can we better link our rewards programs to better align with our strategy?

How PwC can help you:

• Design/optimisation of budgeting and forecasting processes
• MI solution useful for all levels of management decision making
• Adaptable approach in terms of depth of scope but also the timeline required to deliver
• An approach applicable equally well to the highest-level of group MI or detailed business unit MI.
• Comprehensive solutions from the design of MIs up to the implementation

PwC brings a proven approach to book closing and reporting. It rationalises and optimises processes, systems and organisational structures, which leads to providing faster and more reliable information about business activities. 

Typical issues that you can face:

• Cross-department cooperation is insufficient.
• The materiality concept is not applied.
• A large number of additional manual corrections are necessary.
• Management of relations among companies in a group is ineffective.
• IT structures are too complex and data interconnection and quality is problematic.
• Preparation of budgets and forecasts is slow.
• Budgets and forecasts are not accurate.
• Budgets and forecasts are not consolidated.
• Use is formal rather than practical.
• Relation to the strategy is weak.

How PwC can help you:

• Reducing time needed for closing books and preparing of financial statements and reports
• Standardising financial processes and reporting
• Preserving or improving data quality

Costing and profitability solutions address many issues faced by the management of today’s companies: ranging from support for decision making to compliance with regulatory requirements. The objective of cost accounting is to track expenditures to specific products and services. Profitability helps companies define their product strategy and pricing, assists during forecasting, etc.

How PwC can help you:

• Assess the current costing system and its related processes of transfer charging, reporting, financial planning, budgeting and controlling
• Introduce Activity-Based Costing, Activity-Based Budgeting, Activity-Based Management, Economic Value Added and Balanced Scorecard methodologies
• Develop a concept design of a costing model and select an appropriate costing technique
• Map processes and identify available data sources
• Advise you on the selection of a supporting IT tool
• Implement (develop or customise) costing software, define interfaces and perform system testing
• Train client staff, create user manuals, and define work programmes.
• Define reports and integrate the costing model with MIS, DSS, and SEM systems
• Provide regulatory support and assurance over the costing model if required
• Implement best practice financial processes

Cash leakage is usually the result of errors and omissions that slip through even the best-controlled processes. These losses are often greater following mergers and acquisitions, the implementation of new systems, reorganisations, periods of high staff turnover, and payments function centralisation (e.g., shared service centres).

How PwC can help you:

PwC Cashfinder™ can help you recover the cash that would otherwise be permanently lost. We can also help you resolve the problems that caused the cash leakage. Common problems include unclaimed credits, duplicate payments, overpaid taxes, and overcharged telecom costs.

We choose those elements of Cashfinder™ that are most appropriate for your company and situation. Cashfinder™ will find tax underpayments before the authorities do. A project can also extend to reviewing your procurement costs or better managing your working capital.

The FFE Diagnostic provides a 360° degree view of the finance function, taking into account how effectively and efficiently the finance function operates. It comprises a set of structured questions supported by a narrative to provide guidance and assist in the collection of the relevant information and performance measures. The FFE Diagnostic is designed to obtain results in a 4- to 5-day period.

How PwC can help you:

The FFE Diagnostic can pick up and identify the most problematic issues and activities that the company is or will be facing.

Offer to our clients:

• Comparison with world-class benchmarks
• Blueprint for the future direction of the finance function
• Assessment of all, selected parts or their specified areas
• Heath check on value and governance