The Buzz: Michael E. Porter at Harvard Business School introduced the concept of a value chain in his book, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance [2008]. Competitive advantage cannot be understood by looking at a firm as a whole. It stems from the many discrete activities a firm performs in designing, producing, marketing, delivering, and supporting its product.” He adds that it's important to maximize value at each specific point in a firm's processes.

Finance organizations have increasingly evolved from backward-looking reporting to analyzing information in real-time, both from a financial accounting standpoint as well as management accounting.

Taking this a step further, finance is actively engaging in advising other parts of the business based on predictive modeling.

Logistical processes – ranging from procurement, supply chain, sales and customer experience, to even human resources – are all reflected in finance, providing a holistic view of an organization.

Finance then has the opportunity to leverage this information to evaluate the financial impact of strategic decisions and advise their counterparts in all lines of business across an organization.

We’ll ask SAP’s Birgit Starmanns, Accenture’s Rob Campanile and Ventana Research’s Robert Kugel for their take on Finance and Its Focus on Integration into the Value Chain.