Accounting has always been the basis for the provision of precise information to shareholders and partners as well as for all decisions made by management. Reliability and accuracy therefore remain the most important targets in accounting. Speed also stays important in order to provide stakeholders with up-to-date information. Therefore, a monthly financial statement that shows a complete picture of the asset, financial and earnings situation is part of the accounting basics, even if it is not usually legally required.
What is state-of-the-art? - Integration of internal and external accounting
Speed and reliability are also being improved by the long-standing trend towards integrating internal and external accounting. This development was started with the spread of IFRS. It makes reconciliations of different accounting areas redundant, corporate management follows the externally communicated goals, and so there is only "one truth". SAP's new product generation, S/4, now fully supports this concept. Not only profit center accounting, but also profitability analysis can now be generated, saved and evaluated together with pagatoric transactions. The consistent implementation of this concept also requires the integration of the processes and organization of internal and external accounting. In this way the potential of the integrated methodology can be fully realized. In the Central European tradition of accounting, this amounts to a paradigm shift that transforms the finance function at its heart.
How new technologies are driving process automation and optimization
Accounting effort has traditionally been driven by the mapping of business transactions. Here, new technologies promise the next boost in automation. The use of increasingly intelligent robots makes this possible even in an ERP landscape that is not fully integrated. However, the biggest lever of automation continues to be the mapping of integrated end-to-end processes as modern ERP systems have long enabled. Process mining tools now provide effective assistance in analyzing weaknesses in the process. As a result, the accounting manager is evolving from a personnel manager to a process manager.
From the individual company to group level - automation up to the last mile of reporting
In Group Accounting, the integration of the accounting systems also significantly simplifies and accelerates the preparation of the consolidated financial statements. Thanks to excellent accounting processes at the individual company level, the transition to the group chart of accounts, segment reporting and the management of intercompany transactions are fully automated. Even at the Group level, internal and external reporting requirements can be satisfied from an integrated set of accounts. The implementation of ever new accounting standards remains the responsibility of Group Accounting. Modern technologies often help to efficiently implement the inevitable. Even the last mile of reporting can now be further automated. Disclosure management tools speed up the process, reduce the susceptibility to errors and increase transparency. The new ESEF can be fully integrated into this disclosure process in technical and organizational terms and also largely digitizes capital market communication.
Senior Partner
Master of Economics and Business Administration
For Stephan Grunwald, consulting is an entrepreneurial activity with many variations; in various industries, for companies of different sizes, in different management structures. Yet always with the same sense of entrepreneurship. The prerequisite for all this is a sound and broadly diversified foundation in business administration. For him, however, the consistent realization of a concept is the ultimate entrepreneurial aspect of consulting differentiating 4C GROUP from its competition.
His focus lies in the CFO Advisory covering all aspects of decision making and controlling, reporting & planning, cost management, new role of finance (Industry 4.0), HR digitization and innovation management.
He has extensive experience in various industries and consulting of owner-managed and family led companies.
“People, who really want to move things forward” – are the ones Markus Noçon wants to work with. We are happily quoting Markus, since it expresses a central consulting challenge. Namely, mastering the balancing act between corporate decision-making concepts on the one hand and a pragmatic implementation of methods and instruments on the other. This works best with partners on the client, side who want and actively drive change.
His main focus lies within the CFO Advisory, especially in group accounting and consolidation, controlling & reporting, planning as well as performance management systems and consolidation systems.
Senior Partner
Master of Economics and Business Administration
For Stephan Grunwald, consulting is an entrepreneurial activity with many variations; in various industries, for companies of different sizes, in different management structures. Yet always with the same sense of entrepreneurship. The prerequisite for all this is a sound and broadly diversified foundation in business administration. For him, however, the consistent realization of a concept is the ultimate entrepreneurial aspect of consulting differentiating 4C GROUP from its competition.
His focus lies in the CFO Advisory covering all aspects of decision making and controlling, reporting & planning, cost management, new role of finance (Industry 4.0), HR digitization and innovation management.
He has extensive experience in various industries and consulting of owner-managed and family led companies.
“People, who really want to move things forward” – are the ones Markus Noçon wants to work with. We are happily quoting Markus, since it expresses a central consulting challenge. Namely, mastering the balancing act between corporate decision-making concepts on the one hand and a pragmatic implementation of methods and instruments on the other. This works best with partners on the client, side who want and actively drive change.
His main focus lies within the CFO Advisory, especially in group accounting and consolidation, controlling & reporting, planning as well as performance management systems and consolidation systems.
"With the IBM platform we have created a solution with which we have integrated and automated consolidation, forecasting, planning and reporting. The 4C GROUP supported us fully from the conception to the implementation and rollout. At the same time, an internal team was set up and trained so that we are able to carry out further developments ourselves as far as possible and use Planning Analytics as our "performance hub"."
Oliver Markert, Head of Accounting / Financial Reporting / Planning / Controlling / Tax bei UTA UNION TANK Eckstein GmbH & Co. KG
