The disruptive forces of misaligned operational processes & value flows
Challenge: "How to foster seamless business steering through harmonisation of operating models, value flows and management reporting while ensuring business flexibility to react quickly on changing market requirements?"
Sabrina Reitz/ Ikemefuna Allen
The situation
Business transformation, in essence, focuses on fundamentally changing processes, systems, roles and technologies across the entire organisation. Such initiatives are founded on the hopes of achieving measurable improvements in efficiency, effectiveness and stakeholder satisfaction. Naturally, the decision to enact business transformation must be based on a sound understanding of the required changes, how to implement them, and what the implications are once they are implemented. It is imperative to take an embracing approach involving and ensuring alignment between all the stakeholders impacted.
Experience shows that this is hardly the case, with disjunct and misaligned efforts from the two worlds of Operations, and Finance & Controlling. Typically, accounting departments are left in the dark about business operations during process design phases of major transformation initiatives, while professionals from purchasing, production planning, and sales & distribution often seem not aware how their business operations impact accounting.