Finance Reimagined: The Profitability Application
Finance Can Drive Shareholder Value
Finance functions are increasingly expected to do more than report results. Shareholders demand growth, executives expect agility, regulators require resilience, and finance is expected to contribute solutions. Yet many finance teams still spend their time reconciling data, maintaining spreadsheets and validating hard-coded numbers.
There’s a significant opportunity cost in this dynamic: The energy finance teams use up on validation could be used to shape decisions and guide strategy.
This is why the Profitability Application, built on Anaplan, was designed. This application turns the tables by unifying data, allocation rules, reporting and analytics in one platform, giving finance leaders clear visibility into where their organisations create or lose value.
From Reporting to Anticipating
The Profitability Application enables finance to shift from accounting for performance to actively shaping it.
With real-time analysis of revenue and margin, leaders can identify the drivers of value across business lines, geographies and products. Armed with this clarity, finance teams can redirect capital towards higher-return opportunities, renegotiate contracts to improve margins, and cut costs without weakening the areas that underpin growth. The objective is not to reduce cost for its own sake, but to improve capital efficiency and strengthen competitive advantage.
The Impact is Substantial
One global financial services organisation, with our support in implementing the Profitability Application, achieved a 25% increase in shareholder value within a single year. Meanwhile, the same client also recorded $195 million in savings within 18 months, reduced its cost-to-income ratio by 3% and increased capital generation by 7%.
These outcomes were supported by our long-standing expertise in implementing advanced financial modelling and performance management solutions. Years of refining allocation frameworks, industry-specific assumptions and deployment practices enabled us to tailor the application to the client’s operating model quickly and effectively, ensuring rapid adoption and immediate value delivery. The gains were driven by clearer financial insights, faster execution and focused decision-making, allowing the client to pinpoint strong-performing areas, identify dilution of resources and act where returns would be highest.
Speed and Transparency
The strength of the application lies in two key qualities: speed and transparency.
Clients can move from using complicated and uncoordinated spreadsheets to operating on a live modern platform in as little as 12 weeks. This accelerated implementation is possible because the application is built with pre-configured frameworks. The months of development time and decades of financial services experience that went into the design ensure it is built to reflect industry best practices while remaining adaptable to each organisation.
The transparency the Profitability Application provides is equally important. Allocation rules are not hidden in formulas or locked away in models. Instead, they are expressed in clear, configurable logic that reflects how the business actually operates. Leaders can drill from top-line results through to individual drivers, testing scenarios or pricing strategies in hours rather than weeks.
Finance Guiding Decisions
The experience of our clients shows that the level of transformation is tangible. Finance functions that once spent much of their time validating numbers are now guiding conversations on strategy. By automating reconciliation and shortening reporting cycles, the Profitability Application gives highly valuable staff the time they need to focus on analysis and decision-making.
With clear, actionable insight from finance, leaders can better guide how capital is deployed, ensure resources are directed towards the areas of greatest return and support resilience in the face of market shifts. The application does not allow finance to be a back-office function at all. It makes it a leading force for growth, margin and value creation.
Charting a New Course
The introduction of the Profitability Application marks a shift in what finance can expect from its tools. What once required months of effort now takes weeks. Spreadsheet-based processes are replaced by a single, live platform that delivers clarity, real-time insights, and robust decision-making and auditing capabilities. Most importantly, finance moves from a reactive role to a proactive force shaping strategy and value creation.
For organisations ready to embrace it, the prize is substantial: sustained value creation, achieved not by working harder to reconcile the past, but by working smarter to shape the future.