Business Partnering Is A Fast Growing Movement
Own creation: BPIs future offices

Business Partnering Is A Fast Growing Movement

This is the channel "Trends in Finance and Accounting" and we have now crossed 104,000 subscribers! Click "Subscribe" to receive a notification and an e-mail when I publish new articles on this channel every Thursday and the occasional Saturday.

I first heard about business partnering in 2010. I was told that we as finance professionals had to move from the trunk of the car to the front passenger seat. We were to become co-drivers of the business. The term business partner was used. 

The term was used as part of a wider transformation paradigm started a decade earlier by PwC and others.

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Two paths had been outlined. Efficiency and Effectiveness. The mantra is that we must be as cheap and as good as possible at the same time. Ideally, it is not an either-or. To become cheap, we could offshore or automate to decrease time and resources spent on transaction processing and reporting. To become good, we should increase our decision support through business partnering. 

The challenge? No one had a good idea about what business partnering really was and how we could become good at it. Adding to that there were no hallmark organizations that had already done it and stood as shining beacons we could learn from. 

The beginning of a movement 

However, it started a movement that many companies took part in. It involved a lot of trying and failing and even today most companies would say they could improve within business partnering. We have learned a lot and should state that business partnering is first a mindset and sometimes a role. It is a set of activities that anyone in Finance or other corporate functions can do. We have summarized everything in our 3 X I formula.

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As with most change though it follows Gates’ law. We overestimate the impact in the short run and underestimate the change in the long run. From our perspective, we are now at a tipping point and in the next couple of years, we will see a significant increase in the effectiveness of the finance function. We will see finance professionals all over the world finally be recognized as true business partners. What do we base this on? Two things. 

  • The rate of automation in Finance is increasing at a rapid pace (from 34% in 2018 to 60% in 2021 according to Accenture)
  • The overwhelming demand for business partnering initiatives across the corporate world 

Before companies simply were not done with the efficiency path and continued to invest in tools and technology. Now they are seeing the ROI and are turning their focus to the people that remain. There has never been a more exciting time to be in Finance. Now we will ride the wave of impact and become effective to the point that we will deliver world-class performance. 

From start-up to scale-up 

This movement has a big impact on us at Business Partnering Institute. We are experiencing significant growth not least signaled by the hiring of three associate consultants. We also have two incoming directors in the second half of 2021 (more to come on those exciting announcements). Lastly, we are moving into new office spaces where we can truly go from being a start-up to a scale-up. 

There has never been a more exciting time to be a part of the finance function and there has never been a more exciting time to be a part of Business Partnering Institute. We are also seeing the first effects of our strategic partnership with AICPA / CIMA where we are already raising the profile of business partnering among its nearly 700,000 global members. 

We also want to extend our gratitude to all of you that have supported us on our journey. To the 130,000+ that have signed up to our weekly newsletters on LinkedIn. To all those that commented and engaged with our content in the past years. To all that have shown an interest in partnering with or working with us – we hope to still realize this dream! 

There are so many good things to come, and we aim to soon publish new eBooks on “Finance Function 4.0” and “Business Partnering on a Formula”. We are truly excited about what the future brings and seeing finance professionals further elevate their influence in companies all over the world through business partnering! 

Update on social media metrics 

We continue to reach millions of professionals across the world and while LinkedIn keeps tweaking and changing what works it doesn’t change the overall picture. You can see the overall numbers for the past quarter below courtesy of Shield.

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In the past quarter, I ran several polls as they are being promoted by LinkedIn at the moment. What did we learn from these? Here is a snapshot of the key insights. 

  • 27% of finance professionals prefer to keep working from home. This is relatively consistent with the %age of finance professionals that identify themselves as introverts (30%) (n = 962)
  • 70% of people that follow me or see my content have chosen or will choose a career in Business Finance/FP&A with 20% in data science (n = 1,598)
  • 76% would choose to invest in upskilling the team as opposed to a new tool if they had 1 million dollars to invest (n = 1,134)
  • 62% said that to create the finance function of the future we are mostly held back by our mindset. This was a surprising insight when the other choices were people, process, and technology (which had an even split of 12-13% each) (n = 1,467)
  • I followed it up by asking who is responsible for changing the mindset. 59% said themselves while 39% said leadership (n =598)
  • Lastly, on the mindset, I asked how to change the mindset. 51% said through training and 34% said role modeling (n = 612)
  • Still, it won’t be the mindset alone that creates the change so I asked which technology could have the biggest impact. 39% pointed to RPA with machine learning at 30% and Blockchain at 27%. In reality it will be a combination, of course (n = 739)
  • I also asked how automated accounting will become on the back of Accenture identifying that 60% of transactional processes are now automated. 41% said between 81-90%. A weighted average of the voting leaves us at 76% (n = 2,662)
  • There are many ways to go about creating the future of finance, however, knowing what the current top priorities are could be a telling sign of the most effective ways. 39% has digital transformation at the top of the list with 37% saying business partnering (n = 740)
  • I also asked why people chose a career in finance and accounting. Not surprisingly 54% said because they are good with numbers. Only 12% because they are good with people which is a requirement that is rising fast in demand (n = 1,010)
  • In the last poll of the quarter, I asked how you identify yourselves in terms of introvert, extrovert, and ambivert. Given a choice, 48% of you consider yourselves ambivert and contrary to prevailing stereotypes 70% of you say you are not introverts. The finance function is indeed a diverse place! (n = 748)

I will continue to run polls to learn new insights about trends in finance and accounting and be sure to share them with all of you! 

Year-over-Year the reach continues to increase at a doubling rate (as was the case with 2020 over 2019). Once again thank you to all of you for contributing to spreading the message!

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Looking at the blog specifically the growth also continued fueled by subscriber growth to newsletters.

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As always if you have any feedback please do post a comment or send me a message. I am also very open to taking up any topics you think are relevant. Until next quarter!

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Anders Liu-Lindberg is the co-founder, COO (Chief Operating Officer), and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with close to 10,000 members. I have ten years of experience as a business partner at the global transport and logistics company Maersk. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with 60.000+ followers.

Bob Gilarski

Built to Optimize: Business performance, Strategy, Data platform, and Decision support

3y

Anders, Thank you for your insights. This has been a tremendous ride and I look forward to the future in Business Partnering. BobG.

Marvin B.

Experienced CFO with Strategic Financial Leadership skills helping C-Suite and Executive Management.

3y

Thanks for the great article and you are absolutely right with the positive changes of the finance professional. I did a Master thesis ten years ago, about the financial controller role and the way the controller role changes in the last 10 or 15 years and your article confirms it. The outcome of my thesis was that the CEO is the driver in the car and that the financial controller is the navigation that helps and support the CEO to reach the company objectives and if there is a road block or a traffic jam the Financial Controller will redirect or find alternative routes to ensure that the company objectives will be met. In short the Finance professional is the company or organization devil's advocate. I love you article, well done. Cheers Marvin

James Lenihan

CEO @ TreasuryPros | Treasury Management Consulting, Financial Literacy

3y

Another excellent article Anders.

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