Transforming Finance in EMEA for a specialty chemicals company

As businesses grow and evolve, the Finance function must adapt to new challenges and opportunities. Finance transformation is not just about automation; it’s about optimizing processes, improving collaboration, and enhancing decision-making. By centralizing key tasks, leveraging technology, and refining operational structures, companies can create a more agile and efficient finance function.

To streamline their finance activities, a prominent international supplier of specialty chemicals established a Shared Service Center (SSC). With the company growing considerably through acquisitions, the SSC expanded its responsibilities through task centralization, while retaining the local Finance teams. However, the expansion brought process inefficiencies to light and uncertainties related to the workload distribution among certain teams.

To gain a comprehensive understanding of the processes still managed locally, the company sought the expertise and support of TriFinance’s CFO Services to enable standardization, improvement, and automation of the record-to-report process.

Centralizing processes, reducing inefficiencies

A dedicated TriFinance project team conducted an extensive data analysis to comprehensively map the as-is workload of all Finance teams (local & SSC) in the EMEA region. The team focused on identifying processes suitable for centralization, automation, and optimization to drive efficiency gains.

The primary objectives of the project were:

• To gain insights into the existing workload of all Finance teams (local & SSC) within the EMEA region.
• To identify opportunities for centralization, automation, and optimization of local processes.
• To enable standardization, improvement, and automation of the record-to-report process through collaboration between local and centralized Finance Teams.

Partnering with the company’s Corporate Reporting Manager, the project team conducted a thorough assessment of the organization, processes, and systems, mapping the as-is workload of local Finance teams in the EMEA region. Nineteen processes were identified for centralization and transferred to the SSC over a six-month period.

Shared Services Center serving EMEA

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and templates were developed, along with desktop automation, to streamline processes. The transition period involved a review of the balance sheet, resolution of outstanding items, and discussions with EMEA finance teams for local specifics. To ensure a smooth start, a phased approach was adopted, gradually onboarding more complex processes throughout the year.

To operate the SSC, accountants were recruited and trained, supported by TriFinance's Transition and Support services until a permanent employee was hired. On-site reviews captured crucial insights before transition, leading to process redesign and optimization. SOPs and templates accelerated common work practices. The SSC has since served EMEA regions for most GL activities, thanks to TriFinance collaborating with local finance, IT, BI, and corporate services, achieving improved and scalable operations.

Three years after setting up the SSC in EMEA, the company once again sought TriFinance's support to gain insights into the Finance departments of the EMEA region. Both local and SSC teams had evolved since 2019, necessitating a review of process inefficiencies, improvements, and centralizations. In comparison to the original project scope (set-up of a SSC focussed on RTR processes), all finance processes (record-to-report, order-to-cash & purchase-to-pay) running both in local finance departments and in the SSC were in scope.

A clear three-stage approach was favored: initial analysis, workshops, and final analysis.

During the initial analysis, templates were sent to all Finance and SSC team members in which the teams were asked to document their monthly workload for a wide range of activities within record-to-report, order-to-cash and purchase-to-pay. Based on the received feedback, a first data analysis was conducted to clean the data and align on definitions (e.g. the activity “Reconciliation Trade Payables” was understood differently between local (daily reconciliation and thus OTC process) and SSC team members (Monthly Ledger reconciliation and thus an RTR process)) with the teams.

Workshops and data-driven insights for Process Optimization

Following the initial analysis, multiple workshops were conducted to allow local finance teams to explain their workload in detail, leading to insights on potential process improvements. These workshops also served as a sounding board to ensure data inputs aligned with predefined definitions. After the workshops, action points were provided to address data inconsistencies and request clarification or documentation on work-intensive processes. An extensive data analysis followed, resulting in process and regional overviews for efficiency, centralization, and improvement.

Recommendations for optimizing Finance operations

The TriFinance experts presented the following recommendations:

1. Partially centralize credit and overdue management tasks. The analysis showed that local finance teams spend 4% of their workload with significant centralization potential. This enhances their control over these processes and leverages economies of scale.
2. To improve efficiency, it was recommended to challenge teams on their current working practices (by identifying areas of double work with the SSC, and showcase examples of more efficient regions. These recommendations stem from the identification of process inefficiencies, which was achieved by comparing transactions and time spent across regions and drawing from the experiences of both the company’s process owners (of RTR, PTP & OTC) and the TriFinance project team. The analysis revealed that these inefficiencies account for 9% of the total workload.
3. In some regions, address inefficient team structures due to recent acquisitions by merging entities. The proposed solution for this issue was to merge several entities, resulting in a time gain of 7% compared to the current workload.
4. Identify regions that can potentially integrate into the SSC for standard processes, reducing the local workload by 2%.
5. Propose process improvements mainly within record-to-report (miscellaneous charges, VAT, and payroll follow-up) and purchase-to-pay (invoice and payment processing), accounting for 22% of the local finance teams' workload. A recommendation was made to further investigate these highlighted processes to gain a better understanding on how they could be improved.

The follow-up of these recommendations will be the next step in the optimization journey of the company’s Finance department within the EMEA region. After discussing their findings with the CFO and the SSC lead, the TriFinance team worked on the next steps to further optimize the client’s processes, including a focus on the O2C process.

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