The Hackett Group’s New Digital World Class™
Standards Raise the Bar on Finance Performance
By fully embracing digital transformation, finance organizations
can achieve superior levels of efficiency and effectiveness,
including 43% lower cost, improved agility, and enhanced customer
experience, according to new Digital World Class™ finance
research from The Hackett Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: HCKT).
“For decades The Hackett Group’s benchmarks have been the gold
standard by which most global companies measure world-class
performance in finance and other business services. Now, with the
growing impact of digital transformation, The Hackett Group is
raising the bar further with its shift to a Digital World Class
measurement standard. Our new research details how highly
technology-enabled organizations are achieving new levels of peak
performance,” said The Hackett Group Vice President, Research Erik
Dorr.
“The results are impressive. But the bottom line is
straightforward. Our research provides empirical evidence of the
impact that digital transformation is having,” said Dorr. “For
years, companies have been making incremental improvements,
optimizing processes, cutting costs and reducing transactional
labor to reach world-class performance. But new technologies allow
many companies to fast-forward to Digital World Class™
levels of operational excellence and business value. And they can
get much of this benefit by overlaying digital technology on their
existing systems, rather than embarking on large-scale
infrastructure changes.”
A public version of the research, “Digital World Class Finance:
Reaching New Heights in Peak Performance” is available free, with
registration, at http://go.poweredbyhackett.com/findigwc2106sm. It
contains more than 30 metrics detailing the performance of Digital
World Class finance organizations. But here is a summary of the key
research findings:
Greater Efficiency – Digital World
Class finance organizations operate at 43% lower cost than typical
functions (i.e., peers) and 11% lower cost than traditional
world-class finance. Over the past decade, the cost gap between
world class and peers has narrowed as peers caught up, reducing
costs by 2.7% annually while costs at world-class finance
organizations remained virtually unchanged. With the shift to
Digital World Class, the gap has now widened once again. Digital
World Class finance organizations also employ 47% fewer full-time
equivalent (FTEs) than peers per billion dollars of revenue. The
gap is even greater for transaction-processing FTEs (61%), enabling
them to deliver transaction processing at a 62% lower cost.
Enhanced Effectiveness – The Digital
World Class advantage is not just about cost. These elite finance
organizations are also able to deliver higher-quality services,
improved agility and greater strategic value to their companies.
Compared to peers, they spend 2x more time preparing predictive
analysis that addresses future value and 47% more time analyzing
data and information to provide insight rather than collecting and
compiling data. They also have 34% more business analysts with
operational experience.
Improved Customer Experience – Digital
World Class finance organizations have a performance edge over
peers when it comes to customer perceptions. They are 29% more
likely to be viewed by stakeholders as a valued business partner,
and 39% more likely to be perceived as agile in meeting business
challenges.
Six Areas of Excellence – Technology
enablement is at the heart of the Digital World Class performance
advantage. However, to fully unlock the potential of technology,
leading finance organizations also focus on five other critical
levers: data and analytics; cloud-based modern architecture;
operating model evolution; end-to-end process design and ownership;
and talent. The research provides details about Digital World Class
performance in finance in each of these areas. For example, in data
and analytics, the pandemic has led to new urgency in improving
forecasting and analysis, and Digital World Class finance
organizations have a significant head start. They spend 2.4x more
time employing sensitivity, investment and value analysis
techniques. They also spend 38% more analytical time focused on
proactive decision-making, rather than historical reporting.
Digital World Class finance organizations are also at the forefront
of architecture modernization and cloud migration. Finally, to
focus on talent, leading finance organizations are rebalancing
their workforce and increasing financial planning & analysis
(FP&A) head count as a percentage of total FTEs, to improve
their ability to foresee change and affect strategic business
decisions. Highly skilled business enablement leaders are at the
core of FP&A. This role requires advanced analytical acumen to
drive insight and technical IQ to deliver operational efficiencies
through automation and digitization of work, as well as skills
essential to business partnering such as emotional intelligence,
relationship management, innovation, and change orientation.
Action Plan for Digital World Class –
The Hackett Group’s research offers an outline of how companies can
assess their current performance, maturity and capabilities,
identify future capabilities to advance their digital agenda, and
create a journey map to progress towards Digital World Class
performance levels.
Digital World Class finance organizations are those that achieve
top quartile performance in operational excellence and business
value across an array of weighted metrics in The Hackett Group’s
comprehensive finance benchmark. It is also designed to quantify
the performance improvement opportunity achievable by maximizing
technology enablement of finance work and optimizing the finance
technology landscape. The Hackett Group’s Digital World Class
finance research is based on an analysis of results from recent
benchmarks, performance studies, and advisory and transformation
engagements at hundreds of global companies.
About The Hackett Group
The Hackett Group® (NASDAQ: HCKT)
is an intellectual property-based strategic consultancy and leading
enterprise benchmarking firm to global companies, offering digital
transformation including implementation of leading enterprise cloud
applications, workflow automation and analytics that enable Digital
World Class™ performance.
Drawing from our unparalleled IP from nearly 20,000 benchmark
studies with the world’s leading businesses – including 93% of the
Dow Jones Industrials, 91% of the Fortune 100, 80% of the DAX 30
and 55% of the FTSE 100 – captured through our leading benchmarking
platform, Quantum Leap®, and our Digital Transformation Platform
(DTP), we accelerate best practices implementations.
More information on The Hackett Group is available at:
www.thehackettgroup.com, info@thehackettgroup.com, or by calling
(770) 225-3600.
The Hackett Group, quadrant logo, World Class Defined and
Enabled, and Digital World Class are the registered marks of The
Hackett Group.
Cautionary Statement Regarding “Forward Looking”
Statements
This release contains “forward looking” statements within the
meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and
Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.
Statements including without limitation, words such as “expects”,
“anticipates”, “intends”, “plans”, “believes”, seeks”, “estimates”
or other similar phrases or variations of such words or similar
expressions indicating, present or future anticipated or expected
occurrences or outcomes are intended to identify such forward
looking statements. Forward looking statements are not statements
of historical fact and involve known and unknown risks,
uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company’s actual
results, performance or achievements to be materially different
from the results, performance or achievements expressed or implied
by the forward looking statements. Factors that may impact such
forward looking statements include without limitation, the ability
of Hackett to effectively market its digital transformation and
other consulting services, competition from other consulting and
technology companies who may have or develop in the future, similar
offerings, the commercial viability of Hackett and its services as
well as other risk detailed in Hackett’s reports filed with the
United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Hackett does not
undertake any duty to update this release or any forward looking
statements contained herein.
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Gary Baker, Global Communications Director - (917) 796-2391 or
gbaker@thehackettgroup.com
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