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Case study

Finance transformation: For one company, second time’s the charm

A global consumer goods company’s campaign to transform its finance organization had run aground. Bain worked with the CFO and his team to reset the goals, streamline the transformation process, cut costs and determine where additional investment could help build the team’s strategic capabilities.

  • abril 03, 2018
  • min read

At a Glance

  • 20% reduction in annual finance costs
  • 70% reduction in transformation program management FTEs

The Story

The Situation

The company aimed to create a world-class M&A team and achieve ambitious growth targets, while reducing its tax burden. But after a year, senior leaders remained unaligned on the specific objectives. Cultural differences among the company’s geographically dispersed finance units slowed things down, and cost-cutting orders from the top sowed further confusion. The effort stalled out.

Our Approach

  • Prioritize: Working with Bain, the company extensively interviewed its executives to determine what the finance transformation’s “point of arrival” should look like. The company set strategic objectives, metrics, KPIs, targets and timelines; redefined workstreams; and redirected resources to achieve these goals.
  • Simplify: Bain and the company identified bottlenecks and pain points, and found that they didn’t need half of the existing transformation initiatives. They calculated the cost of each trouble area and developed improved workflows that yielded savings.
  • Invest: Based on the company’s strategic objectives--grow its market share, elevate its business and strategic planning capabilities, develop high-value data analysis capabilities, and improve its tax management―Bain benchmarked the finance department’s spending activities against industry standards. That enabled the company to see where to invest and where to cut spending and focus on efficiency. One outcome: the company saw that it could spend less on internal auditing and channel more resources into its M&A capabilities.

The Results

  • 20% reduction in annual finance costs

  • 70% reduction in transformation program management FTEs 

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