CFO Magazine’s May Metric of the Month column (authored by my colleague, Perry D. Wiggins) discusses Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) with an excellent analogy to scuba diving. I highly recommend that column as Perry provides many useful ideas you can immediately use to improve DSO. Perry also…

A core finance process, accounts payable (AP) involves all of the essential activities of an organization to pay its suppliers. As one of the primary organizational candidates for early automation, AP is ripe for innovation through process improvement and automation. These improvements can liberate…

My colleague, Perry D. Wiggins, has recently authored another entry in CFO Magazine’s Metric of the Month column discussing Shared Services. In serving as the CFO for the APQC and in the many finance leadership roles in industry that Perry had before joining the APQC, he has seen many of these…

As many of the readers may be aware, APQC was foundational in the establishment of the Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA), and helped to develop the concept, criteria, funds, and ultimately secure Congressional approval for this award in 1985. Since that award’s establishment, more than…

In the CFO Magazine’s 2018 Metric of the Month article, APQC’s CFO Perry D. Wiggins shares how top performing finance organizations are dramatically faster on the cycle time to monthly close. They are achieving these gains by better data governance, common data definitions, and standardized charts…

There are many benefits that organizations can realize by leveraging a shared services delivery model for finance transaction processing, such as increased efficiencies, reduced costs, and increased productivity. For example, consider the following efficiency and cost metrics for the overall…

Recently we worked with the leader of a large accounts payables group who had been asked by his CFO to comment on how their shared services accounts payable group matched up to benchmarks. In helping him answer that question we identified some very important principles to keep in mind when using…

APQC recently concluded its latest financial management “trends and challenges survey”−260 midsize to large organizations from around the globe participated in the survey −and the data shows some interesting results. In terms of process areas, overall the general accounting and reporting process…

Evey month APQC drills down on a financial management metric to help readers better measure, manage, and improve their finance functions. This month’s metric, based on data from APQC’s Open Standards Benchmarking, considers the metric Cash-to-Cash Cycle Time (as originally discussed by my…

New year, new priorities? Where will your organization be focusing your efforts in 2018? As you get ready to tackle this new year, APQC's research team wants to ensure we understand what your top priorities and challenges are for 2018. We want the research we conduct and the content we create to…