Is your finance function delivering its full potential?

Philippa Carter, business advisory director in RSM UK’s specialist recruitment sector team, highlights some of the common challenges faced by staffing businesses within their finance function offering insightful considerations to how these can be overcome.

What are we seeing in the recruitment sector? 

At RSM, we work with staffing businesses of various sizes and maturity levels. Finance is at their core, providing advice and guidance to support their strategies. However, for this support to be at its most effective the finance function must evolve with the business, delivering timely information through modern and agile digital technologies.

Common issues in the recruitment sector

The following are some of the challenges that we see when working with businesses in the recruitment sector:

• Ineffective software and underutilised functionality. 
• Lack of system integration.
• Inaccurate and/or incomplete data entry.
• Control environment deficiencies, with overlooked policies and procedures.
• No single source of truth for data and reporting including the excessive use of spreadsheets outside of systems.
• Over-reliance on manual repetitive tasks.
• Inadequate or untimely management information to support effective decision-making.
• Opportunities for improvement in working capital cycles. 

Against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving digital landscape, we are increasingly talking to management teams who recognise the potential for improvements. Enhancements within the finance function can help overcome the above challenges and lead to greater efficiencies, including the delivery of effective and timely management information crucial for decision-making. 

How can RSM help?

Armed with a thorough understanding of your systems and processes alongside your strategy and objectives, we can use our wider business, specialist sector and digital innovation expertise to provide solutions to free up time, improve productivity and enhance confidence in data, including management information.

Our goal is to help you achieve your vision for finance by ensuring your finance function operates at its full potential. We combine our commercial understanding, experience of finance, leading practices, and technologies to identify pragmatic initiatives that support your strategy and drive business value.

If you would like to discuss how we can support your recruitment business, please contact Neil Thomas.