Center for CFO Excellence

BCG has developed a comprehensive approach to help CFOs and their teams achieve the highest standard of performance and efficiency—something we call finance excellence. Our CFO consulting approach, which has been the basis for in-depth collaborations with finance leaders around the world, focuses on six core topics.

The Road to Finance Excellence

Structure for Excellence
The role of the CFO should include building and overseeing a framework that aligns finance with the company’s overall strategy through clearly assigned mandates, roles, and skills. We work with CFOs to design well-defined operating models that provides structure for functions, carving out distinct processes and establishing clear rules, guidelines, and procedures for finance interactions

Steer Performance Effectively
BCG’s Center for CFO Excellence helps finance leaders develop a clear understanding of the company’s business models—both conventional and new—as a means of actively steering performance. We also work with CFOs to find ways to translate steering models into value-adding actions, such as by choosing the right incentive scheme.

Maximize Value Through Effective Capital Allocation
Effective capital allocation, aligned with a company’s strategic priorities, forms the basis for long-term value creation. We partner with finance leaders so they can carefully select investment categories and guide major business decisions by efficiently allocating resources beyond the classic decisions about capex, such as marketing expenditures.

Create World-Class Digital-Finance Processes
Digitization allows a company to systematically counter weaknesses and capitalize on unique opportunities, such as robotic process automation and artificial intelligence. BCG’s CFO consultants have the expertise to help finance leaders integrate digital into their businesses, complementing new processes with updated and agile ways of working.

Improve Capital Market Perceptions
In addition to creating tailored strategies, the CFO must proactively and continuously monitor all internal activities that could potentially diminish shareholder returns. Effective communication of large-scale transformations is also key.

Lead a Successful Finance Transformation
BCG’s Center for CFO Excellence helps finance leaders navigate the three phases of transformation: quick wins in the near term that generate reliable and steady funding; a transparent roadmap for the medium term, with meaningful milestones; and, for the long term, the integration of a flexible culture centered on performance and continuous improvement.

Our Center for CFO Excellence team helps help CFOs transform their finance function operating models to achieve higher efficiency and effectiveness, unleash the power of advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, orchestrate companywide transformations to drive the corporate value agenda, and more.

See more of our CFO consulting leaders around the globe

Some Examples of Our Impact

BCG engaged with a global investment bank to accelerate its finance transformation and address key operating model questions. Our work with the CFO and the team to redefine the operating model for higher efficiency and greater effectiveness resulted in cost savings of 15% to 20% in several areas.
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, we helped an international airport operator analyze and refine its capital allocation decision process. This swift pivot on a key CFO strategy led to a capex cost savings of €1 billion.