SMEs are expected to play an important role in job creation and helping the UK to recover from the current crisis. Almost 40% of job vacancies in the UK are in small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), those with fewer than 250 employees. There is a danger in today’s economic climate that organisations could make false economies or even damage their long-term prospects when cutting costs and limiting investment budgets. Leading organisations have transformed their finance functions to better inform these decisions and to help improve performance.

While much has been written about finance transformation in large corporations, particularly multi-nationals, little attention has been paid to how finance functions in SMEs are changing. Research over many economic cycles has shown that the organisations with the best prospects of emerging successfully from any recession are those which can balance cutting costs to improve operating efficiency with continuing to invest to develop their competitive position.