The Finance Factory 57 processes are in operations, finance, marketing, human resources, or any other part of the organization. While there is not sufficient room to deal with every process management issue, if you want to make certain that your processes are making a real contribution, consider the key process related decisions shown in Figure 3.2 and then described in the rest of the chapter. F i g U r E 3.2 Key issues in developing the finance factory Get strategic objectives straight Build in continuous improvement Decide how much value-adding you want to do Get your hands dirty in process design Resource processes appropriately step 1 : Get strategic objectives straight This should be the starting point for all process development, including finance processes. Paying attention to processes has proven short-term and long-term impact. Just look at the impact that process management can have on cost, service, risk, investment and capabilities, as follows: 1 Cost: well-designed and appropriately resourced processes should not waste effort, time, or capacity. 2 Service: well-designed processes should understand what their internal or external customers require and build in to their operating objectives agreed standards for what they will do (service specification); what they won't do (error-free); when they will do it (the timing of service delivery); the range of things they will do (service flexibility); and how much they will improve their services (development). 3 Risk: well-designed processes should build in mechanisms to identify potential failure points, prevent failures taking place, mitigate their effects and recover from any failures that do occur. (We pick this up again in Chapter 5.)