PwC Vietnam Finance Function looking for?

PwC Vietnam
Finance Function
January 2013
Are you the business partner that your organisation is
looking for?
What marks out the finance teams that are achieving best practice in terms of business
insight, efficiency and control? The key differentiator is that they have been able to make
their investments in people, systems and new operating structures really count.
Being a business partner means not only providing flawless financial support, but also providing your
business leaders with timely, accurate, relevant and user-friendly information in support of decisionmaking. This could be for instance profitability per product group or by client segment and other businesscritical information.
In general an organisation can define three key areas of responsibility under the finance function:
1. Compliance and Control
2. Efficiency
2011
61%
16% 23%
3. Business Insight
According to our study (PwC’s global finance effectiveness
benchmark study 2012) efficiency still requires the most
effort/time spent (see figure 1), but business insight and control
are picking up rapidly. We have observed that finance leaders in
Vietnam struggle in all these areas.
2010
70%
14% 16%
2009
67%
15% 18%
0%
Efficiency
50%
Control
100%
Insight
Compliance and Control needs to be at the top of the agenda
Figure 1. Percentage of Finance effort (source:
of any finance leader. Finance leaders should strive to sustain
PwC finance benchmark 2012)
shareholder value and strengthen enterprise risk management
in the face of a challenging economic landscape. For instance many organisations in Vietnam suffer from
bad debts. Surprisingly, many neglect these bad debts today, which causes some of them to go out of
business. Thorough debt restructuring is a critical success factor to survive in our Vietnamese economic
and business environment.
The future finance function needs to optimise risk management, compliance and control to establish a
sustainable cost effective control environment which meets today’s requirements as well as being flexible
for future changes in the economy and regulations.
Changing regulations and multiple interpretations of these regulations make the situation harder. Your
finance team needs to keep up with the pace of change in regulations by having good relationship(s) with
authorities and/or specialists in the market such as PwC.
In the case of internal control, a set of controls has been defined in most organisations but not always
effective. Recently, we spoke with several finance leaders in Vietnam and discussed fraud/financial crime
PwC
within their organisation(s) and how controls (and other measures e.g. whistleblower programs, data
analysis etc.) can reduce the level of fraud/financial crime in their organisation(s) significantly.
In essence, good compliance and control is essential for a well organised finance function and is the
foundation for enhanced efficiency and the much needed business insight.
Efficiency in finance means performing tasks in a timely and cost
effective manner, typically via simplified and standardised
processes that leverage technology. See Figure 2. regarding how
the use of technology can enhance the efficiency of controls. The
same study show that leading finance teams have automated 70%
more of their key controls than typical finance functions.
Top
Quartile
Median
17%
10%
As you can imagine, efficiency is the next step in many finance
functions. Organisations with finance functions in more than one
location are able to benchmark their finance function easily against Figure 2. Percentage of key controls automated
(source: PwC finance benchmark 2012)
each other and improve constantly by sharing good/best practices.
International organisations in particular benefit from this. Many local organisations don’t have standard
processes (good/best practice) in place and IT systems are not used to the fullest extent. Lack of
knowledge and experience are the key reasons for this.
It is time to move from quantity (hiring more people) to quality (increasing knowledge, competencies and
skills). This change in focus will provide organisations with a competitive advantage.
Business Insight is a key objective for most finance functions and entails effective partnering with the
business to create value. Business insight is analysis and advice to support business planning, expansion,
effective use of resources and other key strategic and investment decisions. Business partners combine
their financial and commercial skills to provide insight in order to guide business decisions and influence
strategy.
Leading finance teams
employ nearly 40%
more people in ‘business
partnering’ roles and pay
around 25% more
than typical functions to
help attract quality
professionals
The finance function of today needs to become more business focused and
pro-active in order to fulfill the role of a business partner. Providing
leadership with decision-making information is the key task and at the
same time the greatest challenge. The level of available data within the IT
systems, the ability to extract the right data, the capability to draft
valuable analysis and translate it into decision-making information
are common issues. More mature organisations struggle mainly with
drafting relevant financial and business analysis and translate this in
relevant decision-making information. For example, we see that many
finance functions are not able to provide management with profitability
information of each of their products and/or customers.
Finance functions who want to become a business partner need to be able to provide the organisation with
valuable decision-making information.
Our team of Vietnamese and foreign professionals can help with the full range of finance issues your company may be facing. As
part of the PwC global network, we offer these services alongside our legal, tax, forensics and consulting services and are able to
work alongside other PwC network firms finance teams. To have a conversation with our team, please get in touch with the persons
named below.
PwC
This publication is intended for general guidance only and should not form the basis of specific decisions.
Please contact us for further information and details of our services. For Vietnam, please contact
[email protected] (Partner), [email protected] (Director) or
[email protected] (Associate Director).