Market Perspectives

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that led to improved organizational efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

Ventana Research has awarded Paul Adams at Serco its prestigious 2022 Digital Leadership Award in Office of Finance for using Trintech to transform the financial close process. This award recognizes the individual, organization and vendor that best exemplifies leadership in the technologies that support the Office of Finance. All award finalists in the Office of Finance expertise area were considered for this prestigious award.

After a decade of limited technology innovation, the office of finance computing landscape is experiencing significant transformation. This shift is evident in enterprise resource planning, accounting and financial performance management applications for budgeting, closing and planning that are readily available for licensing through subscription and in the cloud. In-memory computing and big data infrastructure make it easier to process larger volumes of data as well as identify risk and opportunities to improve results. “We’ve always done it this way” won’t do anymore; finance organizations must adapt to the expanding potential that technology is making practical.

Integrating advanced automation into finance closing processes is critical to ensure businesses can trust information and reports. Serco, a British contractor for the provision of government services, was searching for a solution to increase confidence in the close process and the reports shared. The company had been struggling with a highly manual, spreadsheet-dependent process for its financial close, reconciliation and reporting processes. Manual tasks in balance-sheet reconciliation were absorbing staff time needed for more value-added initiatives.

Serco selected Trintech and the Cadency platform to implement a record-to-report approach for close automation, reducing costs and freeing time for workers to spend on more value-added tasks. Capturing knowledge of the processes and standardizing document steps was critical in using Trintech. Serco has achieved a single, standardized approach to balance sheet management on a global scale, and reconciliations require less manual effort.

Ventana Research selected Serco for the 15th Annual Digital Leadership Award in Office of Finance for its leadership in advancing the financial close process. Identifying more efficient ways of working with streamlined policies fit the needs of Serco’s compliance framework. By using a centralized, global close solution, Serco has more insight into the total number of reconciliations as well as the quality of those reconciliations.

Most Office of Finance groups use applications and technology that require innovation and optimization. Trintech addresses the challenges of improving the consolidation and reporting process, streamlining the financial close and enabling the finance group to focus on improving the accuracy and value of the organization’s financial information.

Organizations looking to maximize the return on business and technology investments across people and processes should consider how the Office of Finance can optimize its digital potential. If you have not examined how Trintech can help your organization, it is well worth your time. Congratulations, Paul Adams at Serco, for your leadership.

Ventana Research offers expertise and research-based guidance to the Office of Finance designed to resolve process and people issues by addressing the underlying defects in technology and information. Through its understanding of the vendor landscape and technology trends, Ventana Research enables its clients to maximize substantial investments in technology for ERP, financial consolidation and reporting, budgeting and planning, price and revenue management, subscription management and finance analytics. Change is required to maintain competitiveness and enable financial resilience and organizational readiness to achieve the outcomes your organization deserves.