Day 1 of 3
“The board wants SG&A down 25%. I need a solution by Friday and can't bring anyone in on it.”
Three days. My own team is busy - and affected too. Consultants? Too expensive, too much lead time. LLMs hallucinate; I need defensible solutions.
Our Solution
Day 2 of 3Question
Context
Diagnosis
Levers
Result
That’s a clear message — and 25% SG&A for a company of your size (turnover €925 million) is no small lever. So let’s work together to put a robust plan in place by Friday!
Before we get started: I use a workbench where I automatically record open issues and questions — we’ll pick these up during our discussion. We’ll discuss the current situation, identify measures and draw up a robust plan.
That sounds good! Let’s check, though, whether you can afford it; we need to cut costs, and as CFO, your own department should lead the way. You’ve already given us the service portfolio; for benchmarking purposes, we still need the finance costs as a percentage of turnover, please.
That sounds good! Let’s check, though, whether you can afford it; we need to cut costs, and as CFO, your own department should lead the way. You’ve already given us the service portfolio; for benchmarking purposes, we still need the finance costs as a percentage of turnover, please.
That sounds good! Let’s check, though, whether you can afford it; we need to cut costs, and as CFO, your own department should lead the way. You’ve already given us the service portfolio; for benchmarking purposes, we still need the finance costs as a percentage of turnover, please.
That sounds good! Let’s check, though, whether you can afford it; we need to cut costs, and as CFO, your own department should lead the way. You’ve already given us the service portfolio; for benchmarking purposes, we still need the finance costs as a percentage of turnover, please.
- Consolidate the fragmented finance IT landscape of the business units into one HQ-managed system stack.
- Remove redundant licences, interfaces and maintenance effort.
- Create the basis for standardised reporting & controlling.
- Map the current finance IT landscape across business units (Design).
- Define target stack & migration sequence (Design).
- Migrate and decommission redundant systems and interfaces (Build).
- Cut-over to the HQ-managed stack incl. hypercare (Deploy).
- Enables lever #3 „Reduce and bundle reporting“ (shared reporting layer).
- Requires HQ infrastructure capacity from Group IT.
- Independent of the de-scoped lever „Planning & forecasting“.
Migration complexity across heterogeneous BU systems; change resistance in local finance IT.
That sounds good! Let’s check, though, whether you can afford it; we need to cut costs, and as CFO, your own department should lead the way. You’ve already given us the service portfolio; for benchmarking purposes, we still need the finance costs as a percentage of turnover, please.
Our Solution
01 - Question
02 - Context
03 - Diagnosis
04 - Levers
05 - Result
Day 3 of 3
“I present to the board and we decide on my solution.”
The numbers hold up; the analysis is transparent and easy to argue. The solution is coherent and fits us perfectly. We have concrete measures that pave the way into execution - with AiDVISUM. Have a great weekend!