ISG Provider Lens™ Report: Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO) Services
A research report for ISG Insights subscription research clients
Research and analysis in a new ISG Insights Provider Lens™ report indicate that the Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO) market, though traditional in nature, is emerging as an innovative and technology-driven service segment. We see more and more providers with diversified portfolios and capabilities catering to the expanding and varying needs of different enterprise clients in this space. However, rapidly-changing enterprise client needs make it increasingly difficult for service providers to build expertise and offer services around every aspect of F&A outsourcing.
Our new Provider Lens™ Report: Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO) Services - 2016 builds on months of research focused on services, key service providers in this space, and the global range of buyer needs in order to address this. The report summarizes the relative capabilities of FAO services providers and their abilities to address the requirements of four typical, frequently-encountered categories of enterprise user types (“archetypes”). Each archetype represents a unique set of enterprise user business and technological needs and challenges. And the ability to satisfy the needs of these archetypes is what’s going to enable provider success in an increasingly-diverse FAO marketplace. Even then, experienced guidance will be required to optimize the alignment of provider and services with archetype needs.
Readers of this report will understand better how to strike and maintain the proper balance between their Finance and Accounting requirements and service provider capabilities - and be better able to achieve optimal business value. FAO needs, possibilities, and benefits will be (a) better understood, and (b) more readily accomplished.
Both services providers and enterprise CFOs (and other Finance leaders, as well as outsourcing/services procurement leaders) will be better able to understand each other’s capabilities and requirements, enabling more value for both. Key report findings to enable this include the following:
Service providers need to have a complete understanding of the client’s internal technology landscape and outsourcing objectives. They should be able to relate to the client’s existing archetype and their future requirements. This will enable them to design solutions while providing insights, more as a consulting partner.
Enterprise clients need to understand their organizational characteristics to lay out an effective outsourcing plan and do a suitability analysis and choose service providers based on their requirement.
This new report is available for immediate download by clients of the ISG Insights Sourcing and Procurement (SPS) research knowledge area. Clients may simply log in and download a PDF of the report. Non-clients may obtain copies of the report by contacting ISG Insights at https://research.isg-one.com/learn-more/.
Note: This report presents services providers’ known capabilities in the context of user enterprises’ typical project needs (i.e., archetypes). This report is not meant to rank providers or to assert that there is one top provider whose abilities can meet the requirements of all clients who identify themselves with a particular archetype.