Mediaset Group: Finance and Performance Management

With help from Accenture, Mediaset now has a clear action plan for enabling better control over external costs, generating more accurate and timely financial reporting on program production costs, and accelerating its progress toward high performance.

Mediaset, the first commercial broadcaster in Italy and a major media company in Europe, is evolving its strategic positioning from “pure commercial broadcaster” to “integrated multimedia company.” The broadcaster realized that the pursuit of strong growth and relevant changes in its traditional business model required a review of major support functions in order to improve both the efficiency and quality of services provided to core business operations and managerial processes.

Top management decided to start this optimization effort from the administration, finance and control (AFC) functions, and chose Accenture to help them drive efficiency and achieve the desired results.

Accenture helped Mediaset assess its AFC operations, define solutions to address efficiency gaps and create an execution plan. The analysis gave Mediaset a comprehensive overview of its operational position, pinpointed key areas for improvement, set out three alternative action plans, specified the potential workload savings associated with each scenario and provided high-level proposals for how best to reallocate the resulting resource savings.

The team investigated the causes of inefficient processes outside the AFC areas, confirming and qualifying the plan's initiatives. The team then assessed the investments required to deliver the initiatives and defined a transformation program that Accenture is helping Mediaset implement.

Mediaset now has a clear action plan for freeing up the necessary resources to cover any additional administrative efforts required when launching new lines of business. The proposed initiatives will also enable better control over external costs and allow for more accurate and timely financial reporting on program production costs.

The solution means that Mediaset now benefits from strong shared awareness among its top functional management of the need and opportunity to introduce performance management and integrated process management along the planning-procurement-production cycle.

Other benefits include improved efficiency, better process governance and higher quality of work across accounts payable. The program provides Mediaset with a road map to accelerate its progress toward high performance.