Finance Transformation
The Hidden Cost of a Finance Function That Nobody Trusts
1 May 2025
The most expensive finance function is not the one that is overstaffed or runs on outdated systems. It is the one that the rest of the business has stopped believing in.
A finance function that has lost credibility does not get replaced. It gets worked around. The sales director builds their own revenue forecast. The operations manager maintains a parallel stock system. The CEO stops bringing commercial decisions to finance because the answers come too slowly or do not reflect operational reality. The function still exists, still produces its reports, still closes the month, but it has been quietly removed from the decisions that matter.
This is expensive in ways that do not show up on the finance function’s own cost line.
How finance functions lose credibility
Numbers that get revised. A finance function that consistently revises its reported figures, whether through late accruals, corrections to prior months, or restatements, trains the business to discount what it produces. If the first version of the P&L is not reliable, the organisation stops waiting for it and starts working from its own estimates.
Information that arrives too late. The cost of a slow month-end close goes well beyond the finance team. Month-end results that are available on the twenty-fifth of the following month are not useful for managing the business in real time. By the time the numbers land, the business has already moved on. Finance that is always looking backwards, and looking backwards slowly, becomes a compliance function rather than a management tool.
Analysis that does not reflect commercial reality. A finance function that understands the accounts but not the business produces analysis that operations teams dismiss as out of touch. The gross margin calculation that does not account for how fulfilment actually works. The budget model that assumes linear growth in a seasonal business. The cost allocation that attributes overheads in a way that nobody who runs a department recognises. These things, repeated often enough, create a gap between what finance says and what the business experiences, and the business stops trusting finance’s version.
Finance as a gatekeeper rather than a partner. A finance function whose primary relationship with the rest of the business is saying no, delaying approvals, and applying rules rigidly builds resentment rather than partnership. The business finds ways around it: spending through different cost centres, making commitments before finance is involved, structuring decisions to avoid the approval process. This is not the business behaving badly. It is the business responding rationally to a function that has positioned itself as an obstacle.
What rebuilding trust looks like
It starts with understanding specifically where the trust has broken down. That requires honest conversations with the people who have stopped coming to finance with their questions. What are they not getting that they need? Where has finance let them down? What would useful look like?
The answers are usually specific and actionable. Faster close. Understanding what good management accounts look like gives the team a standard to aim for. More useful variance commentary. Analysis that starts from the commercial question rather than the accounting line. Approvals that take two days instead of two weeks. A finance team that comes to operations meetings rather than waiting to be consulted.
The speed question
Many trust deficits in finance are fundamentally speed problems. The business moves faster than the finance function can produce information. The solution is not for the business to slow down. It is for finance to produce information faster, which means better systems, more automated processes, and a close cycle that does not take three weeks.
This is a finance transformation argument. But it is also a commercial argument. A finance function that produces useful information in time to influence decisions is worth significantly more to the business than one that produces perfect information after the moment has passed.
Maebh Collins is a Chartered Accountant (FCA, ICAEW) and finance transformation specialist with Big 4 training and twenty years of operational experience as a founder and senior finance leader.
Maebh Collins is a Chartered Accountant (FCA, ICAEW), Big 4 trained, with twenty years of experience building and running international businesses. She specialises in finance transformation, ecommerce operations, and digital strategy.