Building the modern-day finance function

Modernising with tech and AI offers an opportunity to rethink what your finance and wider business services team can deliver—and the operating model that underpins this. How can your organisation realise the potential? 

In times of uncertainty, regulation, and transformation, leadership teams are looking to you, the CFO, to help them make sense of emerging risks and opportunities, and guide key strategic decisions. 

Facing challenges

Meeting basic demands can be tough in a function grappling with chronic staff shortages and outdated legacy technology. And with so many accountants nearing retirement age, the roster of unfilled vacancies can only grow. 

By automating routine tasks such as bookkeeping, payroll, and reporting, transformative technologies like AI free your people to focus on guiding and supporting the business. AI-enhanced analytics can also deliver sharper, more decisive insights in a fraction of the time. 

But finance, tax, legal, and HR teams can often find themselves at the back of the queue for systems investment. And even if the budget is there, these new capabilities require time and skills to embed and realise the value. There’s also always a risk that technology reduces the FTE needed to run finance processes only to create more work and people demands within systems teams.

Processes outsourced — but deficiencies remain 

So how can you boost capacity and capabilities? Many of you may have looked to business process outsourcing (BPO) for a solution. But traditional BPO models may have limitations. More often than not, BPO shift existing processes to another provider, rather than automating and fixing the underlying inefficiencies. Off-the-shelf BPO can also be too inflexible to adapt to peaks and troughs in demand or provide the specialist expertise needed to meet fast-evolving business and regulatory demands.

But BPO isn’t the only option. What if there was a whole new way to deliver finance capable of transforming people, processes, and technology in an integrated way?

The finance leaders we speak to no longer see the point of passing on problems without fixing them through BPO. 

They want to harness the full power of AI. They want immediate access to the latest technology, along with people who can help implement it and upskill their teams. 

This matters because nearly 60% of executives say Responsible AI improves returns and efficiency, while strengthening trust and confidence in outcomes. Source: PwC Responsible AI Survey 2025

They want people who can take care of routine demands and implement new regulations—people who know how to utilise data to drive insights.

Executives want to be able to bring in experienced finance professionals to work alongside their in-house teams, building relationships, helping to address operational issues, and passing on key skills as part of the assignment. The result is the ability to deliver long-overdue transformation by connecting data and solutions in a way that is tailored to the outcomes and timelines they are aiming for—without fixed terms or inflexible service level agreements.

These design specifications formed the foundations for the development of our market-ready finance managed services offering, working seamlessly alongside our wider tax, legal and HR managed services offerings.

We’re seeing impactful benefits from these managed services relationships. Examples include our co-sourcing collaborations with a leading financial services firm, which has delivered a shortened close cycle, improved payables days, reduced reliance on manual spreadsheets, and standardised reporting. It’s also improved the finance function’s capacity to deal with business-critical demands such as acquisitions and restructuring.

For many organisations, a new finance operating model is the springboard for the integrating of accounting, tax, HR, legal, compliance, and other key business services.

While these operational functions are increasingly interdependent, most are currently managed in silos—creating inefficiency, risk, and missed opportunities. We’ve seen how bringing them together as part of an integrated managed business service solution can not only lower costs, improve operational efficiency, and strengthen the control environment, but also enhance cross-functional visibility and generate valuable insights from previously disconnected data. Integration also offers a valuable opportunity to share and co-develop talent and technology.

Looking at the specific advantages of bringing tax and finance together as an example, an integrated managed service provider can implement today’s growing wave of new regulations holistically rather than requiring separate change programmes. The results are faster time to compliance and reduced change management costs. In terms of decision support, combined analytics provides the CFO and head of tax with a range of benefits. This includes effective tax rate scenario modelling tied to actual financial performance and cash tax forecasting integrated with treasury and cash flow management.

Looking at the wider business impact of cross-functional integration in rapidly transforming sectors like technology, communications and media (TMT), we’ve seen benefits in areas such as the ability to assess and harness new revenue models. These integrated managed services solutions also deliver tailored solutions that address unique regulatory and operational requirements within different industries such as healthcare and financial services.

Embracing new possibilities

So how can your organisation make the most of this new approach to finance and wider business service delivery? Based on our work with clients, three priorities stand out:

Demands on your finance and wider business services teams keep rising, and their work is critical to your success. At the same time, there’s a real opportunity for you to lead a broader transformation of how your organisation runs.

Managed services can lay the foundations for a delivery model that’s ready for evolving finance operations. You’ll have clear processes and strong controls, you’ll be able to make use of new technology with confidence and—crucially—you’ll tap into an agile workforce with the skills and capabilities you need.

If you’d like to explore how our tech-powered managed services can help you run your operations faster, with smarter business outcomes, we’d welcome a conversation.