What is the Shape of YOUR next ICFR / SOX Deficiency?

69% major corporations have had one or more significant audit deficiencies in the last 2 years.

Financial control and IT control deficiencies remain a major challenge. Despite huge investments in digitization, the problem isn’t going away.… Read More

In 2020/2021, SSCs are no longer transactional, back-office entities. They are the engine of a successful organization, constantly evolving, diversifying and adding strategic and tactical business value.

Alongside the many other leaders, our CEO and founder, Dan French, will be talking at the Shared Services & Outsourcing Week Winter Europe 2021.… Read More

2020 threw everyone a curved ball with often deadly and economically detrimental consequence. This Online Summit for Leaders in Shared Services examines the fallout from Covid-19 and its impact on shared services. We will examine the strangely positive, and the potentially damaging, and address how our long-term plans are altered.… Read More

80% of companies claim disappointment with the results of their P2P technology investments.

Source to Pay (S2P) and Purchase to Pay (P2P) rightly get focused attention as processes that can benefit from digitization. This attention is focused with the hope of achieving a particular “aspiration state” for the S2P and P2P process, that typically includes one or more of the following;

• Reduce maverick spend “improve PO compliance”
• Reduce cycle time of process – “make buying simple”
• Reduce cost of goods and services “improve contract compliance and vendor oversight”
• Reduce effort and cost of process operation “eliminate unnecessary (manual) tasks”
• Optimize working capital “agree and execute optimal payment terms”
• Manage risk “maintain visibility over supply, master data, cash, conflicts of interest etc.”

“What the COVID experience is teaching us about Behavioral Change”

What can we learn from this year about organizing ourselves individually and collectively for success?

2020 has created a global change in habits and behaviors, whether or not we asked for it.… Read More

In a recent survey we ran in the heat of COVID summer, 75% of Shared Services and GBS leaders agreed that the business emphasis is now shifting, as a result of the crisis, from large scale transformation initiatives to more targeted process change and continuous improvement.… Read More

7 Steps to Data Driven Business Processes

As a multi-function Global Business Services Leader, Steve Fox knows a thing or two about global business processes and “managing with data”.

But even he agrees that these challenging aspirations in major businesses, even at a time when this is a critical pre-condition for greater digitization and transformation.… Read More

Impact of Post-Modern ERP landscapes and Cloud Applications

Following on from our highly successful S/4HANA enabled Transformation webcast with Dr Hermann Schuster, Chief Digital Officer at Arlanxeo, this webcast aimed to dig deeper and answer the question: “how do we digitize risk management and control to respond to working model, agility, speed and cost demands accelerated by COVID?”… Read More

“The sudden rise in focus on attestation over user access is linked to the fact that PCAOB Audit Firm Inspections last year were very hot on this issue and so external audit firms have been taking a firm line on this with their clients, which in turn means the clients are getting audit issues raised where they might not have done before.”… Read More