Three major insight domains to focus on as a Finance Business Partner

Business Finance is about creating insights

Finance business partnering comes down to the ability to create business impact by deriving relevant insights and influencing stakeholders to accept and act on said insights. For this to work, we must consider what constitutes a relevant insight to our internal customers, i.e., the business stakeholders, we service.

What's an insight?

Insights by definition is an unexpected shift in the way we understand things . In other words, an insight is new information that challenges our existing understanding, causing us to re-examine our assumptions and change our perspective (Dykes, 2022).

"An insight is an unexpected shift in the way we understand things."

Observations are often mistaken for insights. But, the fact that information stands out as interesting or unusual does not make it an insight – it only becomes an insight with an adequate explanation of the ‘why’ behind the noteworthy numbers. An observation is the ‘what’, the insight arises from the ‘why’, and it becomes an actionable insight by a recommendation, i.e., the ‘so what’.

Three major insight domains

As a Finance Business Partner, it is important to realize that business leaders are seeking insights and recommendations – not mere observations. Only by generating new information that challenges their existing understanding, causing them to re-examine their assumptions and change theirs perspective, are you able to effectively improve decision-making and drive business impact.

To generate relevant insights, Finance Business Partners must engage in analytical efforts related to three major domains:?

1.Running the business: Insights that allow the daily business operations to run effectively. This includes performance management reporting.

2. Changing the business: Insights to help drive business optimizations and process improvements to make the business better.??

3. Growing the business: Insights related to change initiatives, business cases, and investments to explore opportunities related to new products or markets.

Here's what that means in more detail.

Running the business

Finance Business Partners play a critical role in ensuring that the business is running optimally on a daily basis. By being close to the business, monitoring and controlling operations, and tracking results, insights can be derived that will allow the business to more easily deliver its products or services to the end-consumer.

"Insights can be derived that will allow the business to more easily deliver its products or services to the end-consumer."

A critical part of running the business entails being on top of performance management processes. Finance Business Partners must provide relevant insights about key performance indicators (KPI's) and other supporting business metrics that can help steer the organization towards its overarching strategic objectives. In this regard, a key objective for the Finance Business Partner should be to provide insights that can aid the translation of strategic goals into operational activities.??

Changing the business

In addition to providing insights related to daily operations, Finance Business Partners play a critical role in identifying insights and providing recommendations and new perspectives on how to improve the business through process improvements, LEAN initiatives, and other business optimizations.?

"Finance Business Partners are uniquely positioned to identify inefficiencies and propose relevant solutions to change and improve the business."

Having access to an abundance of data while bridging the business and the finance function, Finance Business Partners are uniquely positioned to identify inefficiencies and propose relevant solutions to change and improve the business. An effective Finance Business Partners knows how to identify insights that can be leveraged to change the business for the better.?

Growing the business

Finally, Finance Business Partners must be able to identify insights and provide new perspectives and recommendations on how to expand the business. This entails, deriving relevant insights that can be leveraged to take advantage of unexplored business opportunities, drive innovations, and implement other change initiatives to secure the company’s competitive advantage in the future.

"Finance Business Partners must be able to identify insights and provide new perspectives and recommendations on how to expand the business."

An important part of the effort to grow the business, entails the Finance Business Partner's role in developing clear and well-documented business cases/plans in collaboration with business stakeholders and other relevant parties. By translating business ideas into structured business cases/plans, showcasing the monetary consequences, the Finance Business Partner helps support corporate decision-making and effective prioritization.?