Introduction

One crucial skill finance professionals are never taught during their formal education is the power of personal engagement with operations and using these relationships to deliver bottom-line value. There is too much focus on models, processes, procedures and systems without regard to the fact that all these have to be developed, operated and interpreted by people.

I never cease to be amazed by the number of job ads that contain the title “Business Partner” without the candidate or employer knowing what the term means or understanding the behaviours and competencies associated with effective business partnering. Many organisations also fail to understand the powerful linkage between partnering and organisational performance. They simply see business partnering as an attempt to convince themselves that by following the latest trends, the organisation will succeed.

What is Business Partnering?

Beyond clichés, finance business partnering can be broadly defined as  “the alignment of the finance function with business operations to acquire business knowledge and influence decision-making”. It recognises that the true value of a finance professional has shifted away from the “what happened in the business” to “what should happen” and “how to execute change”.

In its most pure form, the finance business partner will have a dual reporting relationship, directly into the finance function and indirectly to the business. In a more general sense, business partnering is about real-time information gathering and decision-making that crosses formal organisational structures.

A typical partnering function has two high-level objectives:

1. Providing commercial finance support to the activities of the business  -  this aspect calls on predominately “operational disciplines”  of a finance professional such as forecasting, analysis and modelling.
2. Challenging the status quo of the business with an emphasis on shaping the future strategic direction. In particular, challenging those charged with decision-making within the business.

The latter objective emphasises the personal qualities required of the finance professional. This includes the power to influence,  their gravitas and command amongst business members,  and the ability to manage multiple stakeholders carefully.

How to be a great Business Partner

There are several aspects to being a great business partner. From my experience, they include the following:

1. Sell the benefits to yourself first. If you believe in them, then others will too.
2. Identify critical people drivers. Every business has a core group of people who are a crucial source of business knowledge or are at the heart of business decision-making. If you are new to an organisation and can’t readily identify them, seek the counsel of a long-term employee who does.
3. Build acceptance for partnering within business operations. If the business and its leader understand your intentions, then they are more likely to grant you a seat at their table.
4. Form well-developed relationships with the business and nurture them – partnering is all about people, and if the relationships are there, then insight and influence will follow.
5. Focus on one-to-ones with the business. A group can be an intimidating environment for people to make decisions or to be challenged by someone from outside the group. One-to-ones allow relationships to develop and insight to flow.
6. Don’t be afraid to be challenged back from the business. It is all about getting the right outcomes, and often the business will know best.
7. Be Future Focused. Over-interpreting the past adds little value. Your role is to help the business move to a perfect future rather than dwell on an imperfect past.
8. Don’t allow yourself to go native – you are a finance professional, after all. Getting close to the business does not mean you should allow your judgment to be clouded or influenced in the wrong way.
9. Don’t be their administration clerk. Partnering is about providing high-value insight and challenge to the business. The moment it becomes just about updating bespoke spreadsheets kept by the business indicates that something has gone wrong and the reason for the partnership needs to be overhauled.

Business Partnering and the link to Corporate Performance

Business partnering is not an end in itself, but a means to drive improved financial performance. The main benefits of a well-designed and executed business partnering function include the following:

More accurate and timely decision-making:

• The finance professional can better identify business performance defects at an earlier stage.
• Alternative solutions from those at the “coal face” of the business are easier to discover
• Agreeing and implementing corrective action can occur more promptly

Breaking down the line management silos of a business that often cause dysfunctional decision-making and sub-optimal financial performance:

• A culture of trust and working together is established  that maximises information flows
• It is easier to influence the business where rich partnering relationships are in place

Business Partnering in Practice

A few years ago, I joined an organisation that had a globalised client base but was local in its approach to business finance / engagement. It could be described as being “old school”, where the business produced a profit & loss, and made all the decisions.

Timesheets were regularly submitted late; the quality of business analysis was poor, but most of all, the interaction between the finance department and the business was virtually non-existent. As one business leader remarked to me on my first day, finance was the “dark side” of the company.

The first observation about this silo structure was the profound and obvious impact these behaviours were having on business performance.

In order to change things, I formalised a business partnering program that involved:

1. Obtaining business backing for the need for business partnering. This was done through a series of one-to-one presentations that highlighted the benefits of aligned decision-making.
2. Creating decision-useful analysis tools, including a data warehouse and sales pipeline that aggregated data from disparate systems in the organisation. These tools created future-oriented resource planning that drove profitability improvement.
3. Weekly partnering meetings shifted the focus away from month-end to discussing future sales pipelines and supporting resource plans.
4. Hosting regular feedback sessions where the business and finance could honestly appraise the relationship

These factors forced the business to clean up its data quality issues and drive real-time accountability in updating systems. The weekly meetings shifted the focus to the future and drove reciprocal accountability between business and finance. The “them and us”  had become “we”, which is what business partnering is all about.