Support Functions Transformation

Transforming support functions, such as Finance Processes and Human Resources Services, can dramatically reduce costs and improve project delivery effectiveness while maintaining competitiveness.

BRIDGE A1 offers expertise, built up over more than 35 years, in creating profitable growth and value-added differentiation for companies that benefit from its support. Our team will assist you in the implementation of a transformation of strategic support functions, whatever the size of your company.

BRIDGE A1 helps you optimize your finance processes to drive up activity levels.

Automation, digitalization and ERPs enable Accounting / Finance officers and Shared Service Centre managers to implement optimized end-to-end processes more efficiently, at reduced cost and with fewer errors.

By taking full advantage of technological opportunities, today’s Finance managers have what is needed to go beyond operational excellence. They know that digital transformation of the finance function guarantees their organization’s ability to keep pace with a fast-changing mature global environment, and better serve their customers.

We accompany Finance functions to help them become world-class performers in the digital age, as we:

• Streamline and standardize end-to-end processes and system environments by improving automation, integration, governance and control
• Build Shared Service Centres and Global Business Services
• Use the lean thinking principle in the service of process optimization
• Revisit how performance is managed by implementing reporting which serves the business

Our team enables Finance departments to execute their transactions with greater speed and efficiency, so more of their time can be used for analytics and decision-making.
The main advantages for Finance Departments:

• Proactive role in Financial Services
• More effective decision-making
• Operational performance measure based on value chain and stream management
• Realistic cost approach per the Target Costing concept
• Safer, more efficient and shorter financial processes

BRIDGE A1 helps you gauge the effectiveness of various functions and processes, to achieve your organizational goals.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are intrinsically linked to a firm’s strategic goals and are used to help managers assess whether they’re on target as they work towards these goals
Some example of KPI:

• A sales team might track new revenue, total revenue or new customer capture, to assess progress towards corporate revenue targets
• A customer support team might measure customer service by the number of orders delivered on time / total numbers of orders
• A marketing group will look at the contribution of marketing-generated sales leading to total revenue over time, to gauge their effectiveness
• Production will look at quality (rppm) and lead times
• Human resources will look at employee engagement, employee turnover, time-to-fill open positions and other related metrics

Managers and key stakeholders will monitor these indicators over time and set up plans as needed to improve the KPIs in support of the firm’s strategic goals.

It takes considerable effort to develop a high-quality set of performance indicators. A number of key challenges include:

1. When a firm’s strategy and key objectives are not clear, measures tend to only focus on financial outcomes.
2. Too much reliance on financial indicators offers an imbalanced and incomplete view of the health of a business.
3. Measures deemed important in one area may not be viewed as important by others.
4. If compensation is tied to key targets for performance indicators, this introduces a conflict of interest and considerable bias into the process.

BRIDGE A1 helps you implement the right Internal Control System.
Internal controls help to provide reasonable assurances to a company that:

• Its financial reports are reliable
• Its operations are effective and efficient
• Its activities comply with applicable laws and regulations

These represent the three main objectives of an internal control system, for which the organization’s board of directors, management and other personnel are responsible.

There is a current trend to implement an excessive number of controls; a set of 50 to 70 controls should be sufficient, whilst too many can be counterproductive.

Areas covered are:

• Entity Level Controls (ELC)
• Pension fund
• Capital & Equity
• Hedging
• Financing
• Intangible assets and Goodwill
• Payroll
• Financial reporting
• Fixed assets (or Property, Plant and Equipment)
• Purchasing to payables
• Order to Cash
• VAT
• Treasury
• IT

BRIDGE A1 has the knowledge and the experience (SOX) to help you focus on the most important ones.

The study starts with a risk assessment, then links those risks to the relevant controls through a risk control matrix. Define proof of control, sign-off is not sufficient.

• Defines the control owner, the control approver and the frequency
• Drives implementation and internal communication
• Helps update the process descriptions with the defined controls

BRIDGE A1 can enhance your company’s ability to take a broader perspective on business performance.

Our experience in working with leading international industrial groups has shown us what helps drive a business: Value Stream Accounting or Lean Accounting.

In parallel, “beyond budgeting” transforms the budgeting process and avoids the following issues inherent in traditional budgeting:

• Traditional budgets take a long time to prepare: up to 4 – 5 months.
• As many companies prepare and consolidate their annual budgets manually in Excel, it is slow to develop and exposes the budgeting process to human error.
• The level of detail is too great as companies often make the mistake of building too much detail into the budget, creating far more complexity than necessary.
• There is an excessive number of iterations; a typical budget can require 5 – 6 iterations before it is accepted by senior management. Leading companies focus on minimizing the number of iterations to reduce time and effort.
• Budgets are internally focused. Most of the numbers in the budget are based on previous years’ data. All too rarely is a budget based on existing and anticipated economic factors that drive volume and cost. Few companies evaluate their proposed revenue and cost structure based on similar companies in the industry. Finally, the budget measures internal metrics such as revenue growth, but fails to take into account other levers of value such as customer satisfaction.
• Budgets lock in costs through the year. While the budget is thought of as a tool to control costs, all too often costs are locked into the budget for the year. Even if economic conditions vary widely from the assumptions upon which the budget was built, the company’s cost structure resists downward pressure as those costs were budgeted for the year.
• Politics permeates most budgets. The annual budgeting process has become a high-stakes game of bluffing. Many managers “pad” their budgets with extra costs so that they end up with something they envisioned after their budget requests have gone through multiple iterations.
• The budget is quickly obsolete. Given that the budgeting process can start four or more months before the end of the fiscal year, and coupled with a dynamic business environment, it’s no surprise that many budgets are obsolete after the first month of the fiscal year.
• Monthly follow-up: Many lines of the budget are divided by 12, which does not make sense with seasonal business. Seasonal effect of the vacation reserve is usually not taken in account. There is also room for gaming: shifting sales towards the end of fiscal year, when people are focused on the next year budget!

Incentive measurements can be set up with “target costing”, which comes from strategic planning.

BRIDGE A1 helps you provide valuable information for crucial managerial decisions concerning productivity, leading to improvements in profitability.

Lean Accounting is the technique that allows Finance to support Lean Manufacturing. Standard costing is designed for mass-production manufacturing, but is not compatible with the flow management promoted by Lean Manufacturing. The goal of traditional costing is to achieve an as low as possible (standard) unit cost, whereas Lean Management aims to get the flow as short as possible. Lean Accounting actively supports Lean Manufacturing.

BRIDGE A1 assets:

• Over 20 years’ experience in financial management of international companies
• Long-term expertise in Target Management /Value Stream Accounting implementation

BRIDGE A1 helps you integrate all management processes for business travel and travel expenses.

Travel and expenses (T&E) processing has long been characterized by manual processing, complex approval procedures and heterogeneous systems.

Booking travel and submitting expenses is often viewed as frustrating and inefficient by employees, while employers struggle with the enforcement of compliance and corporate travel policy.

Corporate managers need to evaluate how state-of-the-art travel and expenses solutions can substantially improve the end-user experience and add business value for the organization, to become more agile, dynamic and automated.

BRIDGE A1 proposes expertise and insight built on several T&E projects to accompany Travel and Expenses management:

• Digitalize systems to accelerate the transformation and optimization of the T&E process
• Process & IS solutions re-engineering (E2E process analysis, optimization / harmonization, automatization / digitalization, selection of appropriate IS tools, KPIs and reporting)
• Insights to revamp existing travel policies
• Defining optimal target operating model
• Carry out RFP process to select best adapted underlying solution
• Systematize and coordinate new process & tool implementation
• Project & Change management, communication, knowledge transfer, training courses

ALIGN your Human Resources Services to your business strategies.

BRIDGE A1 can enhance your company’s ability to improve the value and efficiency of Human Resources functions.

Human capital and company culture are the most valuable assets within a company. In today’s highly competitive and mature markets, companies that are successful have a strong sense of belonging, identity and leadership that supports innovation, creativity and self-expression of those at work.

• Move away from heavy administration to agile business partnering, to free-up time to anticipate needs of the core business
• Return Human Capital to the heart of operations & transformations as a key to success

We can redesign your HR strategy, processes, organization and supporting technologies in ways that deliver immediate and lasting added value. Our comprehensive HR transformation services include:

• HR transformation and organizational design
• Service delivery model strategy, design and implementation
• HR capability maturity assessment
• Talent management programme integration
• Competency model development
• Technology and outsourcing strategy and selection
• Organizational change management strategy, coaching and implementation
• HR organization: effectiveness and training
• HR outsourcing: advice and support