Why We Need Business Partnering Transformation

Over the past 5-10 year roles termed [Function] Business Partner has popped up everywhere especially in the Finance and HR functions. The idea was to bring the support functions closer to the business and develop a strategy for how these functions could help drive more value added activities. Unfortunately it would seem though that the first wave of business partner positions have not succeeded in adding the value they were intended to. The main reason for this is that there is no clear definition of what activities a business partner should engage in. Therefore the position becomes a free for all to put whatever job content in it a company or manager wants. It doesn’t mean all companies have failed starting up business partner functions or introduced the mindset. We have had quite of success with it ourselves as I have previously written about (How A LinkedIn Ad Turned Into 10 Million Dollars). However the position clearly needs more focus and take center around value creation rather than reporting or administrative tasks.

We therefore need Business Partnering Transformation and while it might be something different depending on what function you work in I will try and share here my views on what a Finance Business Partner should be doing:

1. All activities of the business partner must pass the value added test – meaning are they related to adding value to the bottom-line?
2. The business partner should be connecting strategy with execution - meaning involvement with or driving major strategic or tactical initiatives such as cost savings or revenue optimization projects
3. The business partner should be the focal point between the support function and the business critical functions – meaning that the business critical functions should have one point of contact into Finance
4. The business partner will also be the one to present the numbers to the business in order to ensure that there is one ultimate owner of the story which Finance is sharing with the business

While this list doesn’t exhaust the areas that a business partner should be involved in, it serves as a good starting point of the prioritization that companies need to make to extract maximum value from its business partners.