Corporate finance consulting

We address the finance departments of both major groups and medium-sized companies. However, we neither overlook performance departments, which are increasingly involved within the companies nor, sometimes, IT departments, because interactions between business and IT areas get to be more and more intricate.

« Décideurs » magazine highlights our practice on this topic.

Strategic missions are about building / reviewing business plans but also about creating a business model for a new activity. The revision of cost price calculations is a difficult exercise fully in line with the revision of business or profitability models.

Other missions are more specifically focused on financial activities. Many missions concern cash flow and, for instance, aim at drawing up cash flow forecasts, creating a cash pooling or netting system, or selecting and steering the implementation of a TMS (Treasury Management System).
Another type of missions deals with the review of process related to the monthly or quarterly account statements releases, in order to reduce delays. Choosing an ERP system and monitoring its implementation is also a part Akeance Consulting's references.

Other missions relate to performance improvement and monitoring. This is particularly the case for WCR optimization or review of budget process, but also for reporting master plans or reviewing a company's dashboards and, more tool-oriented, choosing and implementing BI solution.

In a generic way, some missions deal with the organization of a department or a direction, such as pooling the back office functions of a company, restructuring an accounting or a legal department, or centralizing a billing function.

From a tool point of view, Akeance Consulting accompanies its clients on business tools such as ERP or TMS, and also on the selection and implementation of transverse tools such as EDM, consolidation, reporting or BI solutions.

« Every report is wrong », that is what we used to say at Akeance Consulting! Beyond the joke, many different definitions of financial or physical aggregates exist and sometimes, even the definition of turnover differs. The different dates of data capture, in various databases, mean that the reports can be questionable. Not to mention that the dashboards are often too numerous and not very fluid, with the excuse that "everything is interesting" instead of "what is useful".

Beyond management difficulties themselves, managers sometimes face difficulties with their finance department. And very quickly, IT tools are the pretext for malfunctions and dissatisfactions. However certain prerequisites must be discussed: is the chart of accounts harmonised within the group? Are the validation circuits from orders to invoicing respected? Are the inevitable breaks between ERP and Excel tables secured? Are the parameters of the tools compliant? Is an additional training to the tools necessary? In short, when faced with malfunctions, let’s not be too quick to incriminate the ERP.