ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Finance transformation
Kestrel Retail is redesigning its finance function. It will place a small team of finance professionals inside the marketing, supply chain and store operations divisions to interpret results, challenge assumptions and advise managers on decisions, while routine processing moves to a shared service centre. Which statement best describes the resulting operating model?
The case describes a multi-part finance model: a shared service centre for transaction processing, business partners embedded in divisions for decision support, and typically a centre of expertise for policy and specialist advice. This separates routine work from value-adding advice, unlike a single head-office function.
- AA three-legged model in which a shared service centre handles transactions, business partners support decisions and a small centre of expertise sets policy and specialist advice may complete the designCorrect
- BA single-tier model where all finance staff sit in head office
- CA model in which finance staff only prepare statutory accounts
- DA model that eliminates the need for any specialist finance expertise
Explanation
Placing finance staff within divisions to support decisions is business partnering, with transactions in a shared service centre. A centre of expertise for specialist matters is commonly the third element. The other options ignore either partnering or the SSC, which the case describes.
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