HFS Highlight: KPMG’s New Performance On Demand Solution Brings The OneOffice To The Mid-Market, Starting With Finance

HFS has written about the concept of the Digital OneOffice for a few years now. Now more than ever, we see the OneOffice concept sustaining as a “have-to-have” business environment to operate and compete effectively in this virtual Pandemic Economy. OneOffice does away with the siloed constructs of the front, middle, and back office, and instead focuses on the end customer, stitching data, process chains, and technology layers to create smarter operations that deliver the best employee and customer experience.

Exhibit 1: The HFS OneOffice Framework seeks to eliminate silos for better data flows across functional areas

The OneOffice would allow functions such as finance and accounting and HR  to better share data, and coordinate activities across procurement, sales, and customer facing functions, working across upstream and downstream activities that all impact end customer experiences. KPMG has recently launched a solution offering, in partnership with Microsoft, that starts to answer the “how” of building the OneOffice. In our discussion, KPMG referenced the HFS Digital OneOffice framework as the inspiration behind how it designed and envisioned its new solution, Performance On Demand (POD).

KPMG’s Answer For The Mid-market – Performance On Demand

While KPMG works with some of the largest firms globally on new technology initiatives for finance, it recognized the distinct challenges of the mid-market (organizations with annual revenues <1B$) in operational transformation and investing for the future. Both the mid-market and the large enterprise clients experience the same challenges around cost, control, capital, and compliance. Yet the finance transformation conversation is largely restricted to the large enterprises, primarily because smaller businesses cannot afford the expensive consultants, large Capex, and multi-year implementation timeframes typically associated with finance transformation.

KPMG has taken its best practices from working with enterprise clients, and has designed a connected technology solution, Performance On Demand, powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 intelligent business applications. Performance On Demand is a comprehensive solution, tailored for mid-size companies, that unifies the functional processes, technology platform and application support, all made available through a subscription-based cloud service.

Core to the service are constantly evolving, functional leading business practices spanning people, process, and technology, based on decades of experience which the firm references as target operating models (TOMs). In its first iteration, the solution is focused on the finance function. Over time, it will expand to others, such as supply chain, talent, and sales & marketing.

Specifically, here’s what KPMG’s new Performance On Demand solution envisions to deliver for your finance organization:

• Best practices to kick-start finance technology transformation – KPMG’s teams have developed blueprints and TOMs based around Microsoft’s all-encompassing technology stack (from Dynamics 365 to its Power platform), taking the time and labor intensive visioning and complex planning out of the implementation equation. At the outset, KPMG is focusing on finance transformation, but on its roadmap is helping clients across a broader mandate including supply chain operations, human capital management, and customer engagement.
• Rapid deployment – With its streamlined approach, KPMG estimates a 4-5 month time to go-live, compared to a typical 12-18 month timeframe. This accelerated deployment gives clients a faster time to realize benefits—i.e. better resource allocation towards value creation activities within the finance organization, increased efficiency due to automation and reduction of manual processes.
• Ongoing updates with a predictable cost base – As a mid-market solution, POD is offered at a lower buy-in with a more manageable (fixed monthly fee) cost base. Clients receive ongoing access and regular updates to the finance model from KPMG’s functional and industry subject matter experts.. The service includes a pre-configured, industry-specific environment with the business application, advanced analytics, data models, processes, defined security roles, controls, and training, wrapped into one outcome-based delivery model. Clients also receive ongoing quality control, monitoring service, application support, and dedicated relationship management throughout a multi-year contract.
• Opportunity for layering on Triple-A technologies – KPMG’s roadmap includes advanced analytics, AI, and automation developed in coordination with Microsoft. E.g. intelligent forecasting, automated digital invoicing, and vendor collaboration portals.

The bottom-line: Fragmented systems and siloed data are solvable problems in finance organizations today. Explore new approaches to finance technology transformation, such as KPMG’s new mid-market proposition.

The opportunity to create connected data and processes on a unified platform make Performance On Demand a promising value proposition from the consulting firm, from a OneOffice perspective. We will further evaluate KPMG’s Performance On Demand solution as a Digital OneOffice proposition in a follow-up HFS POV.

Smaller companies have often struggled to access innovative technology solutions, including both core platform modernization, and the introduction of emerging technology interventions to improve business operations. With KPMG’s approach, mid-market clients could potentially leapfrog into action to realize “the future of finance”, now, with a view to developing a OneOffice organization in the future.