More recently, the CIMA Forum has been considering how finance transformation presents an opportunity for finance to take on a broader role: to improve decision making in organisations. Finance transformation has often been considered in terms of the impact of market forces, competitive pressure and developments in information and communications technology and globalisation on the F&A function. But it is also necessary to look at the opportunities to take on a broader role within the front office and the front line areas, as shown in Figure 1 (and which are discussed further in section 2.4, the challenges for finance, page 16). Figure 1 Finance transformation and the opportunity to take on a broader role
Equity analysts Enterprise governance Sarbanes-Oxley IFRS
Head office
Back office
ERP systems CPM applications SSCs and BPO 1
Front office
Front line
1Enterprise
resource planning (ERP), corporate performance management (CPM), shared service centres (SSCs) and business process outsourcing (BPO). Source: CIMA, September 2007
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