As finance organizations progress from mastering the basics toward strategic business partnering, they move up a maturity curve of increasing efficiency and value. Accenture has defined stages, or ‘horizons,’ of this finance transformation journey:
Horizon 1: Basic – Delivering Quality Back Office
At Horizon 1 of the transformation journey, the focus is within finance and accounting (F&A)—addressing critical skill gaps and cleaning up the processes, master data and related support networks that primarily affect the day-to-day business of the finance function.
Horizon 2: Emerging – Supporting Business Growth
At this stage, the focus is on transforming the activities of the finance organization to support the anticipated and ongoing growth of the business while still addressing costs.
Horizon 3: Competitive – Competitively Optimizing the Business
At Horizon 3 of the transformation journey, finance addresses the information coming into the finance and accounting (F&A) organization—as well as the information finance provides to the business at large. There is a focus on working with sources feeding into the F&A services to ensure that the information is of maximum value to the organization.
Horizon 4: Leading – Strategic Business Partnering
At this stage, the finance organization engages in a collection of activities and capabilities that make them full strategic partners in the business.
Taken together, horizons 1 to 3 build the organization towards the strategic business partnering relationship.