14/03/2024 2 min Read

Smell the Coffee

The concept of Global Capability Centres (GCC) for F&A (Finance & Accounts) has brought about new ways of working. Experienced practitioners who understood the Business, Accounting, ERP and Process have been replaced. The new age practitioners are quick on the systems and are trained to work a process efficiently. This shift has facilitated scalability of FinOps through talent availability and process standardisation. However, the handicap is the lack of Business, Accounting and ERP knowledge – do we know what the data is saying? can you smell the numbers? It is indeed a problem of plenty, because for the first time, there is so much data concentrated in the hands of a few people. As GCC leaders, are you making the most of it?

A customer, whether internal or external, has certain expectations from GCC. Process compliance and efficiency are a given. Increasingly CEOs and Boards are asking, ‘What is the GCC contributing to the business?” “Show me the value – business outcomes!”

The value you can provide lies in the ability to get your team to decipher the story behind the numbers. From cognitive memory, a practitioner can spot trends and patterns from the past. But this is purely based on the intuition gained from previous experience. Developing the skill to systematically interpret data in a business context is easier said than done given one’s time and performance pressures.
Embedding and using data analytics throughout the GCC process can take this pressure off the team. It empowers a practitioner to focus on the results of data analysis rather than trying to interpret data from scratch. Intelligent use of data analytics elevates the GCC from a processor of data to a source of useful insights. The GCC leader is then able to demonstrate value added to the business and gain credibility for a wider role in the business. Those who don’t smell the coffee will be left behind to pick their way through the debris of data they are buried in.

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