Finance management consulting

Supporting your finance department in particularly challenging projects

The finance department is subject to many fluctuating requirements and has to deliver highly accurate information both internally and externally under considerable time pressure and according to fixed deadlines.

You have to adhere to legal reporting requirements and simultaneously fulfil different objectives on an economic, regional and international reporting level. In addition, company’s today undergo a life cycle that includes:

• M&A processes
• Carve-in/carve-out
• Changes in hedge accounting policies due to:
  • Changes in form
  • Group change
• Changes in reporting:
  • Structures
  • Language
  • Mapping
  • Internal GAAP
• Downturn or rapid growth
• Etc.

all of which requires highly flexible financial management that continually has to rise to new challenges and redefine itself.

In view of this, there is often no time to fully come to grips with process optimisation,
the documentation of process descriptions or the specific demands of new situations.

Comparable financial processes will often be carried out differently at different company sites and/or different subsidiaries and affiliated companies. It is also likely that the different sites, subsidiaries and affiliated companies will have resources with varying specialisms and qualifications.

• Financial process optimisation:
  • Inventory of the "actual" processes and definition of the "target" processes
  • Interface optimisation
• Company-wide (location-wide) process harmonisation:
  • Through centralisation, and, as a result,
  • Increased efficiency and effectiveness
• Support for certain financial and controlling projects:
  • Budget
  • Conversion to GAAP
  • Cash plan implementation
  • Consolidation
  • etc.
• Budgeting, planning and forecasting:
  • Introduction and roll-out e.g. throughout the company

• Procurement of information by experienced consultants on the basis of one-on-one interviews and observations at the workplace
• Review of optimisation options and operational support in the implementation of decisions (if desired)
• Operational support on the basis of many years of operational experience

• Takes pressure off the department concerned
• Specialist consultants with extensive operational experience, and
• Project support:
  • Business analysis of demands
  • Technical implementation
  • Roll out in the various work areas
• Support until the desired project objective is achieved
• Internationally deployable and independent based on the task description

Our consultants have worked in companies as heads of accounting departments and/or in auditing firms and have developed a wealth of experience on the basis of this.

Practical experience combined with operational advice leads to holistic support that goes above and beyond familiar, theoretical high-level consulting approaches. You will benefit from our consultants' years of experience in various large projects at other companies in the same industry.

IT plays a very important role, particularly in the financial sector. It is here that our advisers benefit from very close contact with the COSMO CONSULT group's ERP consultants. Whereas any other external consultant would take time to come to grips with specialised knowledge, our associates will easily and promptly draw on their previous experience.