Finance Department Review - Global Charity

Our Client

A global charity with 16,500 members in the UK.

Our Brief

To review and report on the efficiency and effectiveness of our Client’s Finance Department in respect of its management, resources, service and accounting procedures.

The overall objectives of the review were to:

• identify any gaps or overlaps in the work, financial regulations or accounting procedures
• indicate future management and staffing needs
• suggest any changes needed in the distribution of responsibilities between departments/work areas
• identify potential improvements in efficiency and effectiveness
• clarify and improve the services provided to users and develop understanding of the service offered
• suggest standards and ways of measuring their effectiveness.

Our Approach

Our proven approach was to break the project into separate activities, each with a specific deliverable. The first stage was the project initiation stage during which we ensured that our client and BlueSpark shared a clear and agreed view of the scope and objectives of the project, the time-scales and “milestones” and respective roles. It was also important that a suitable project structure was put in place at this stage to manage and monitor the project. We then undertook a series of interviews with Finance and non-Finance staff and facilitated a key users/managers workshop to complete the fact finding and analysis stage of the review. After analysing the information gathered, we began to identify our findings, conclusions and draft recommendations. These were set out in a draft report which we discussed and agreed with the project sponsor before we went on to develop our final report which we presented to senior management team.

Our Achievements

We enabled our Client to develop its financial processes and operations, working more efficiently and effectively to meet the needs of the organisation.

In summary, our recommendations enabled our Client to work more efficiently and effectively through:

• Improving existing financial processes
• Making better use of IT
• Raising financial awareness and understanding across the organisation
• Improving team work within the Finance team and measuring performance
• Devolving responsibility for routine financial processes to other parts of the organisation
• Evolving the Finance function’s role as a provider of financial information and advice.

We also provided 2 options (with the pros and cons for each) for achieving these recommendations both of which depended upon how quickly our Client wished to progress. Our Client is now implementing our recommendations.

Go back to previous page