A Week In The Life Of An Accountant Post Finance Transformation

This article is sponsored by Blackline and you can learn more about how they can help you plot a path towards a finance transformation. You can download their Digital Finance Transformation Playbook “Finance Transformation” here. 

Finance and Accounting have been in a decade-long transformation journey and while some feel there is no end in sight we have actually come far already. Accenture reports in 2021 that 60% of traditional finance tasks are now automated (up from just 34% in 2018). However, far too many transformation projects have had the aim to simply reduce the cost of Finance rather than increase the value of Finance. This is a key flaw as it simply reduces the size of the finance function and leaves a lot of value on the table. 

Instead, we believe finance leaders should create plans for what to use the freed-up resources for. Having automated processes and increased data quality comes with a lot of benefits if we understand how to use the numbers properly. It will enable accountants to transform into finance business partners and use their time in a completely different adding a lot more value to the company. 

In this article, we share our view on what a week in the life of an accountant could look like when the finance transformation is completed successfully. We will also discuss what skills accountants would need to excel in such a week and how they would need continuous enablement from digital solutions. 

The ideal week for the transformed accountant 

Finance transformation is just as much a functional agenda as it is an individual agenda. If accountants do not decide to do anything differently, they will be left behind to do mundane work without a chance to be a business partner. Hence, it is important that all accountants choose to work in new ways and many of them could ideally become finance business partners. Here is what an ideal week looks like for a finance business partner in a transformed finance function.

There are naturally a few pre-requisites that need to happen to make this week come true. 

• Accounting becomes a centralized function that is largely automated with full responsibility for producing the numbers. This also involves all transactional processes of order to cash and procure to pay.
• A center of excellence for analytics is established to ensure most reporting and analysis is done in a standard way and based on one set of numbers.
• The finance operating model is changed to transform accounting roles into business partner roles with proper upskilling given to accountants, so they are confident to perform in the role.

Just imagine for a moment that most of your finance teams operate in this way. How much value would be created and how would it change business stakeholder’s perception of finance and accounting? We bet it would be to the point where they would rather invest in more finance and accounting staff than additional sales reps! 

How accountants succeed in this role 

To succeed in this post-transformation role, accountants must spend very little time producing numbers. The most they would get involved is qualifying input on accruals and manual adjustments as well as creating ad hoc analysis on request from their stakeholders. This can only happen if processes are further automated and if analysis of the numbers is made simple and easily accessible. 

Also, we must provide accountants with simple tools and processes that they can use to engage with their new stakeholders in the business. We must recognize that this a hard behavioral shift to do for most accountants. We have been used to having a relationship with the numbers, which shifts to people for the large part. Hence, we should invest in upskilling the team so that they are trained in using the new tools and processes and are provided with coaching and feedback into their practical application. 

We guarantee that your finance function will become a value-generator rather than a pure cost-drain if we do all this. This is a fundamental shift and the real benefit of the decade-long finance transformation that we have gone through. However, we must travel the last mile now and enable accountants to become business partners to realize the vision of the value-generating finance function. Are you ready to start traveling?