Top finance functions are embarking on substantive changes to their processes and their organizational role. APQC conducted a case study research project throughout 2018 seeking best practices from organizations transforming their finance and accounting functions, and found some common themes…

APQC is engaged in current and ongoing research on planning, budgeting, and forecasting through our Open Standards Benchmarking Survey on Planning and Management Accounting. As part of our research, we look at both key performance indicators, as well as practices data, about these processes…

Robotic process automation (RPA) has quickly become inevitable. In March of 2018, APQC interviewed Tilak Banerjee, a director at Dell-EMC, on RPA: “When we started in 2015, RPA was more or less a new concept in the shared services industry,” said Banerjee. “Right now, a lot of companies I talk to…

Invoicing and accounts receivable (AR) are core finance transactional processes that lie at the heart of an organization’s liquidity and working capital management. These two processes are flip sides of the same coin, with invoicing encompassing the activities involved in billing customers for…

Business process management is a proven operating model to help organizations reduce variability, increase standardization, and improve process performance. APQC recently interviewed the Global Credit-to-Cash Process Owner at Minnesota-based Cargill Inc., a multinational food, agriculture,…

APQC published its recent Metric of the Month examining the number of budget versions before final approval. It discusses ways organizations organize their budgeting practices to minimize the number of versions needed to get one that is finally ready to send forward for Board approval. When…

Accounts receivable (AR) is a core finance transactional process that lies at the heart of an organization’s liquidity and working capital management. APQC takes a process-based view in order to facilitate benchmarking and process improvement, and defines the AR process as all of the important…

CFO Magazine's July 2018 Metric of the Month: Uncollectible Balances, by APQC’s CFO Perry D. Wiggins discusses various collection practices associated with Top Performers under the metric of “Total Uncollectible Balances as a Percent of Revenue,” which is part of APQC’s Customer Credit and…

More and more, APQC is hearing talk of “the rise of the analytics competency” and the importance of finance professionals to develop knowledge, skills, and competencies not only in their operational finance areas (accounting, planning, auditing, internal controls, etc.), but also in analytics and…

Would you rather owe someone money or have someone owe you money? Maybe it’s just me, but I think both of these options are fairly uncomfortable. But, in the business world, owing and being owed money comes with the territory. And in no case is this truer than in that of the ultimate ower (and,…