Infographic: Benchmarking to Drive Success in Process Improvements

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tasmih1234
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Infographic: Benchmarking to Drive Success in Process Improvements

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Process improvement is a systematic approach that helps an organization optimize its underlying processes and achieve more efficient results. Benchmarking is one way organizations can clearly identify focus areas for improvement efforts, establish performance baselines, set goals and/or identify new practices from best-in-class organizations.This infographic looks at the common practices and reason for using benchmarking to support process improvement efforts.
Six Ways to Improve Your General Accounting Process Performance
6 Practices Shrewd Finance Departments Use
The general accounting process is a core transactional process dubai mobile numbers list within the finance function, involving maintaining the chart of accounts; processing journal entries, allocations, and adjustments; conducting reconciliations, consolidations, and eliminations; and finally, preparing trial balances and closing the books at the period end. For smaller organizations, this vital process may not be too cumbersome or resource-intensive, but for larger, distributed organizations with many different business units or subsidiaries, this process can be very complex and resource laden. Leading organizations continuously work to streamline, standardize, and automate the general accounting processes and associated activities as much as possible, so that the work that remains is uniquely suited to the talents and skills the of the finance professionals and accountants working in this area.

What drives performance in general accounting? APQC recently conducted an analysis of its Open Standards Benchmarking (OSB) General Accounting and Financial Reporting Benchmarking® dataset to better understand performance drivers associated with top Key Performance Indicator (KPI) performance in general accounting, and found the following practices are associated with better KPI performance:

Centralizing and streamlining general accounting processes―A critical part of financial management strategy is how the organization elects to structure the delivery of the processes in order to best support the needs of the business and other key stakeholders. Shared services are created by combining common or repetitive processes from multiple business units and centralizing them into one location, which is the shared services center. According to the OSB general accounting data, slightly less than 20 percent of survey respondents leverage shared services (e.g., serve as a shared services center or rely on a shared services center) for general accounting. Yet an analysis of the data found that the shared services delivery model for general accounting was associated with several key benefits, including a faster cycle time and fewer errors. Participants who indicated that they serve or rely on a shared services center for general accounting reported performing the annual close significantly faster and noted significantly fewer errors in the processing of journal entry line items than survey participants reporting a self-supporting role or relying on other business units for general accounting.
Instituting strong data governance―Ensuring consistent and clean data in general accounting is of paramount importance in order to facilitate an accurate representation of an organization’s financial transactions. This includes finance data definitions and the underlying Chart of Accounts (COA). A little more than half of survey participants in APQC’s OSB General Accounting assessment have extensively achieved common finance data definitions and data governance, and about two-thirds of survey participants have extensively implemented a standard COA. An analysis of the data shows that organizations that more extensively implement common finance data definitions and data governance generally reported significantly better cycle time and efficiency KPIs than organizations that do not. Similarly, organizations that have more extensively implemented a standard COA reported that they perform the annual close significantly faster and reported significantly fewer errors in journal entry line item processing.
Standardizing accounting processes and assigning process ownership―Process standardization is a critical driver of performance, and often a prerequisite to successful automation. End-to-end process management and global process ownership frequently go hand in hand with shared services implementation. A little more than half of survey respondents in APQC’s General Accounting and Financial Reporting OSB assessment have extensively achieved standard, common finance processes and about 44 percent extensively adhere to strict process ownership in finance. An analysis of the data shows that process standardization and leveraging global process owners can potentially pay off in terms of general accounting KPIs: Survey respondents that have more extensively standardized common finance processes also reported that they are significantly faster at completing the monthly consolidation of financial statements and the annual close; they also have significantly fewer errors in journal entry line item processing. Similarly, survey respondents that more extensively leverage global process ownership for finance perform the annual close significantly faster and have significantly fewer errors in journal entry line item processing.
yadaysrdone
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