More than two thirds of the Chief Finance Officer employees are typically bound in Transaction Processing, whereas the remaining one third is split between Reporting (10%), Controls (15%) and Decision Support³ (10%). Overall, the cost of the Chief Finance Officer department tends to amount to 2-4% of revenue. This leaves a lot of room for efficiency improvement. However, in the long-run, Transaction Processing staff should be no more than 25%, Reporting 15%, Controls 15%, whereas Decision Support staff should become more prominent at 45% or more of the total Chief Finance Officer staff. The cost of the Chief Finance Officer department (although varying by seize of the business) should not exceed 0.8%-1% of revenues.   

Enterprise Resource Management Systems are often fragmented and not always compatible. Furthermore, many are highly ­labor-intensive and require large amounts of headcount for ­basic maintenance and update works. 

Processes are focused on internal problems and remain ­heavily controlled by multiple managerial levels, leading often to ­“tunnel-thinking”. Efficient processes are an essential driver for the pace of the transformation. 

The office atmosphere often appears to be reactive and repetitive rather than proactive, influential and open to accept and ­solve challenges. The average technical competence and analytical skill-set of staff is medium to low. Often the Chief Finance Officer staff is isolated from the “real” business, and is branded as a stand-alone overhead function that needs to be fed-through. 

In most cases, the lead is given to other talents and functions to fill the strategic gap, often creating a forest of new pseudo functions such as “Strategic Support”, “Executive Strategy Assessor” or “Executive Finance Advisor”. However, none of these strategy functions really seem to have a lasting positive impact since they mostly lack the detailed understanding of the financial history and future financial capability of the Chief Finance Officer. 

As a result, many Chief Finance Officers seem to be more in the role of a “Scorekeeper” rather than “Adviser” or “Partner” to the business. Of course, it would be incorrect to say that all Chief Finance Officers are in the same position but there definitely seems to be an underlying pattern of structural inefficiency in many cases.