Author: Liu Xiao
When the company welcomed the launch of the Financial Sharing Center (referred to as "Sharing Center", the same below) with joy, it was discovered that the launch was not the end, but a new starting point. After the business migration, contradictions and problems exploded:
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The leader thinks that the efficiency improvement is not obvious, and it is difficult to meet expectations;
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Automation effects such as intelligent auditing, RPA, and high-level human-computer collaboration are not obvious, and it seems that they are all just talking on paper and looking at the moon from a distance;
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The sharing center seems to have endless classes, and the employees have done a lot, but the leaders are not satisfied and the business units do not understand;
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business finance and shared finance complaining about each other;
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...
Where is the problem? By comparing and summarizing the general laws and core contradictions of the construction of many enterprise sharing centers, the author believes that the main crux lies in: standardization. The construction of a sharing center is a comprehensive transformation of organizations, personnel, processes, standards, and systems, of which "standard" reengineering is the core element. Through professional integration, the sharing center needs to complete the unification and reconstruction of various standards. However, the large framework system of this work, the cumbersome work content, the close connection between industry and finance, and the span of departmental coordination all make the construction process complicated and lengthy. The breadth, depth, and precision of standardization directly affect the business undertaking capacity, system construction level, and efficiency improvement of the sharing center.
In order to better help enterprises understand the methods and paths of sharing center standardization construction, the author of this article, based on years of sharing consulting experience and a large number of leading practices of UFIDA, sorts out the general methods and important concerns of sharing center standardization construction for readers. The content is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the lightning protection guide for standardized construction systems and construction methods, and the second part focuses on case sharing (please pay attention to the " Yonyou Smart Finance " official account to be released tomorrow).
Standardization construction should establish a panoramic frame system
With the development of theory and the accumulation of practice, many companies have realized the importance of standardization at the early stage of financial sharing, but how to consider the elements of standardization and what work content is included in the panoramic framework system... these are often not completely clear, resulting in enterprises being blind and lacking overall cognition. In addition, some companies view the standardization system purely from a financial perspective, paying special attention to accounting processing, but lack an end-to-end governance system from business occurrence to result output, resulting in the separation of finance and business.
Based on the functional positioning of the sharing center as a transaction processing center, fund settlement center, and data empowerment center, we believe that the standardized panoramic framework system should include the following three levels.
Institutional layer: The core essence of the institutional layer is to define the management basis for the operation of the sharing center, including internal and external aspects. The first is external accounting policies and accounting estimates, mainly to meet external compliance requirements. Therefore, the sharing center needs to clarify the recognition, measurement and disclosure requirements of various accounting elements in accordance with the national accounting policies and accounting estimation requirements, and form consistent standards internally, such as the recognition standards and depreciation methods for fixed assets. The second is the related financial management system within the group, mainly to meet internal management demands, such as the group's internal control requirements for various expenses, expenditure scope, expenditure standards, whether it meets the eight national regulations and internal cost control objectives, etc. What needs to be emphasized here is: due to the large scope of the group's internal financial management system, during the construction of the sharing center, it is necessary to focus on the systems related to the accounting function positioning of the sharing center or the systems that need to be controlled during the accounting process.
Data layer: The core value of the sharing center lies in the collection, processing and output of data, so it is necessary to establish end-to-end data standards and form a clear mapping relationship. Data standards include but are not limited to the following aspects:
Business type: define standard business types for the complicated economic matters (also known as business scenarios) of enterprises, and establish a consistent and clear language system.
Master data specification: Finance needs to collect various master data such as organizations, personnel, customers, suppliers, projects, and materials during processing. This type of master data often requires the establishment of a data owner within the enterprise, and finance is the party that uses the data to feed back needs and problems.
Other form fields: In addition to business types and master data, enterprises also accumulate a large amount of other data in their daily business, and these data are often carried in the form of form fields.
Budget subject: In order to standardize the budget management caliber, the enterprise defines the standard definition of budget subject for economic matters.
Accounting subject system (including auxiliary): A system for enterprises to classify accounting elements in accordance with the requirements of national accounting policies.
Financial/management statements: Report specifications issued in accordance with a certain format and requirements after the accounting of various economic matters is completed.
Operation layer: The operation layer mainly defines the operation specifications of the sharing center. For each economic matter, clear and unified supporting attachment specifications, financial control points and operation specifications, and accounting processing specifications are required. Based on this, a standard SOP operation guide is formed to guide the execution of each post in the sharing center.
During the construction process, enterprises can compare the above dimensions, and based on the management requirements of "unification + compliance", diagnose their own standardization foundation and clarify the construction gap.
End-to-end standardization should promote industry-financial collaboration
It can be seen in the end-to-end standardization panoramic framework system that standardization is not only a work item of the finance department or a department of the sharing center, but also requires the cooperation and cooperation of various teams within the finance department as well as finance and business-related departments. Under normal circumstances, the business type, accounting subject system (including auxiliary), supporting attachments, financial control points and operating specifications, and accounting processing specifications can be led by sharing, and other departments cooperate; accounting policies and accounting estimates, related financial management systems within the group, budget items, master data specifications, and financial/management statements are led by relevant responsible departments and coordinated by the sharing center.
The sharing center should actively promote the "Top Leader Project" strategy, use relevant forces to promote inter-departmental collaboration and co-construction, and clearly put forward collaboration departments and collaboration requirements at each stage to ensure the end-to-end full-process governance effect.
Standardization should clarify the direction and goals of step-by-step construction
The content of end-to-end standardization work is cumbersome, with close business-financial linkage and numerous cross-departmental coordination, and standardization work is closely related to the diversity/complexity of business forms, its own accounting foundation, management maturity, and information system foundation. Therefore, standardization is an iterative and long-term work. When the online task is urgent, it will also face the conflict and balance between the long-term goals of integrity and precision and the short-term goals of online operation. Therefore, under the guidance of the overall situation of shared construction, enterprises need to combine their own foundations, clarify the direction and goals of step-by-step construction, and do a good job of balancing "long-term preparations" and "short-term quick wins".
(1) Step by step construction content
Enterprises need to carry out overall planning and step-by-step construction based on the importance level, scope of influence, and leadership of the construction content. For sharing-led standardization work items, the following step-by-step construction content can be used as a general logical relationship for reference:
The first stage:
Construction content: sorting out business scenarios and optimizing the accounting subject system.
Business Scope: Whole Organization Whole Business
second stage:
Construction Content:
1. Optimize the accounting subject system (including auxiliary), clarify the group's control strategy and degree of control, and unify and optimize the subject system accordingly.
2. Based on business scenarios, establish standard business types and accounting processing specifications to meet the goal of automatically generating vouchers for shared online.
3. Carry out standard form design and clarify form field requirements.
Business scope: The optimization of the accounting subject system needs to be based on the entire organization and business, and the scene sorting and form design can be rolled out according to the online business.
The third phase:
Construction content: Based on the standard business type, complete the sorting out of the supporting appendix-financial control points and operating specifications, and accounting processing specifications.
Business scope: Rolling forward according to the online business.
(2) Organize and advance step by step
The construction content of the second and third phases is often closely related to the batches promoted by the organization. Considering the iteration of standardization, it can be matched with the scope of the organization that implements the online organization, and the sample unit is selected based on the online organization. With the gradual advancement of the construction and the continuous enrichment of samples, continuous iteration and improvement will continue.
In short, for the standardized construction of the sharing center, it is necessary to do a good job in system construction on the basis of benchmarking diagnosis, so as to avoid unclear construction goals, incomplete construction content, unclear construction paths, and inappropriate construction methods due to lack of overall cognition during the construction process. In the second part of standardization, the author will introduce the practical problems and solutions related to the standardization of well-known enterprises in different construction stages (construction period, operation period) of the sharing center based on leading practices, so stay tuned.