Improving how finance teams operate

I provide practical finance process improvement focused on operational clarity, reporting efficiency, and reducing low-value manual work.

How I think:

Most reporting processes evolve organically, shaped by changing team structures, operational pressures, and external reporting requirements. Over time, this can lead to excessive manual workflows, duplicated effort, and inconsistent reporting approaches that leave little time for meaningful financial analysis or communication.

I’m passionate about improving how finance teams operate in practice - simplifying data flows, automating repetitive tasks where appropriate, and creating more consistent and efficient ways of working.

With extensive experience across financial management, reporting, and analytics, I’m particularly interested in the intersection between finance operations, process improvement, and emerging automation opportunities.

My Services

All services broadly follow the same 3-phase structure:

  • Phase 1: Discovery & Goal Definition

    Understanding current processes, challenges, objectives, and desired outcomes.

  • Phase 2: Analysis, Design & Development

    Review of workflows and information flows, identifying opportunities and developing practical solutions.

  • Phase 3: Recommendations, Delivery & Handover

    Providing prioritised recommendations, supporting implementation where appropriate, and ensuring sustainable ownership.

  • Structured review of month-end close and reporting processes, focused on reducing manual effort, improving reporting consistency, and creating better ways of working.

    This review seeks to understand how the close and reporting cycle operates in practice - identifying where workarounds, duplication, delays, and low-value tasks are clogging up workflow.

    Focus areas may include:

    • Timetable ownership and coordination

    • Reporting process flow and dependencies

    • Materiality and operational value of close activities

    • Exploring automation opportunities

    • Ledger data extraction and single-source reporting

    The objective is not simply to ‘close faster’, but to create a more efficient, effective, and repeatable close process that improves reporting clarity whilst freeing up team capacity.

    Potential outcomes:

    • Reduced month-end pressure and manual workload

    • More consistent reporting structure

    • Improved visibility of responsibilities and progress

    • Increased capacity for meaningful analysis

    • Improved communication of financial position

    • Better alignment between financial reporting and operational decision-making

    • Identification of automation and process simplification opportunities

  • Improving the connection between contracts, activity data, payment mechanisms, and financial reporting to create more consistent, reliable, and operationally useful income information.

    Commissioning income exists across multiple layers of complexity, often disconnected:

    • Contract envelope

    • Planned & actual activity

    • Inconsistent payment schedules

    • Finance ledger structure

    • Internal & external reporting

    Over time, inconsistencies between these layers can create significant manual reconciliation work, reduce confidence in information, and limit the ability to understand true operational and financial performance.

    Focus areas may include:

    • Alignment between payment guidance and finance coding

    • Reconciling between contracts, payments, activity data, and the finance ledger

    • Simplifying and standardising reporting approaches

    • Visibility of performance against plans in terms of both income and activity

    • Income account and cost centre redesign to maximise internal benefit

    • Cash flow reporting for commissioning income

    This review aims to improve both organisational understanding of commissioned income and the flow of data from contract to report.

    Potential outcomes:

    • Greater confidence in income position & accruals

    • Improved visibility of operational & financial performance

    • Future-proofed income chart of accounts

    • Reduced manual reconciliation efforts

    • Reduced audit burden & supporting workpaper creation

    • Improved capacity for income teams to focus on analysis and engagement with clinical teams

  • Design and implementation of practical finance workflow improvements, automation opportunities, and technology-enabled processes that create sustainable long-term change.

    Many organisations recognise opportunities to improve the way finance operates. The challenge is often not identifying what could improve — it is understanding how to get there or simply finding the capacity to do it confidently.

    Teams can struggle with:

    • Understanding where automation can add value

    • Designing sustainable processes rather than temporary workarounds

    • Integrating new processes into existing systems and teams

    • Capacity limitations

    • Managing change in a way that people feel confident adopting

    • Translating ideas into practical workflows

    Technology alone rarely solves these problems. In order for improvement work to be sustainable, a clear understanding of people, systems, and operational objectives is essential.

    Focus areas may include:

    • Designing future-proofed finance workflows

    • Planning automation projects

    • Creating standardised & reusable templates

    • Designing approval & notification workflows

    • Building dashboards and ‘one-button refresh’

    • Helping teams adopt and sustain new approaches confidently

    • Improvement culture & lean/systems thinking in finance

    The output could be anything from a roadmap to implement new ideas, to a fully built solution with handover time for your team to confidently take it forward. The aim is to design a meaningful project that is realistic and appropriate for both current and future resource levels.

Let’s Work Together

If you're interested in working with me, complete the form with a few details about your project. I'll review your message and get back to you as soon as possible.