Connecticut CPA Magazine Excerpt – Finance Transformation: Organizational Design Strategies to Streamline the Financial Close

By Kelly Harper, CPA – Client Relationship Leader, CliftonLarsonAllen LLP (CLA)

This article appeared in the Winter 2026 issue of Connecticut CPA magazine.

The financial close process is a cornerstone of organizational performance, yet it remains one of the most resource-intensive and error-prone activities. While technology and process optimization have been widely adopted to accelerate close cycles, the human element – how teams are organized and deployed – often determines success.

This article will explore three organizational models that can transform the financial close – outsourcing, shared service centers (SSCs), and strategic reorganization – along with insights and implementation considerations for finance leaders looking for ways to create a more efficient financial close while maintaining proper accounting controls.

The Concept of Organizational Design

In previous articles, we examined how automation and process redesign can shorten accounting close cycles. This final installment focuses on organizational design – the people dimension. Even the most advanced systems can fail if roles and responsibilities are unclear, fragmented, or if accountability is lacking.

Finance leaders can rethink traditional structures to address:

• Duplicated efforts across business units.
• Limited expertise in more specialized areas.
• Resource bottlenecks during the financial close period.

Organizational redesign is not just about cost, it’s about creating a finance function that is strategic, scalable, and agile enough to handle curveballs that may come about during a financial close process without jeopardizing financial controls or deadlines.

Why Organizational Design Matters

Traditional finance models often rely on siloed teams and manual handoffs, creating inefficiencies and compliance risks. Organizational redesign can result in scalability to handle peak workloads, specialization for complex reporting requirements, and consistency in accounting operations across the entire organization.

Creating an optimized finance organization operating model can have positive impacts on the close cycle. Benefits include reducing the financial close process – potentially resulting in more timely financial information, improving accuracy of the financial records, and facilitating compliance with rules, regulations, and expectations.

Additionally, an enhanced finance organization can help improve employee engagement through clarity of roles and responsibilities as well as the opportunity to grow and develop within the organization.

Three Models to Consider

1. Outsourcing

Outsourcing is no longer simply a way to cut costs – it has become a strategic lever for finance organizations to achieve efficiency. There are several benefits outsourcing arrangements can produce.

It can often be difficult to find specialized experience in areas such as statutory reporting or specific software. Outsourcing certain functions can eliminate the stress of looking for an employee that has specific experience or knowledge.

Further, outsourcing can create the ability to scale during peak periods without the expense increase of additional headcount. With many outsourcing arrangements, the provider of services will provide predictable costs using a fixed-fee arrangement. This allows for expense planning and management.

The decision to outsource accounting operations does not come without risks. First, data security and compliance can be of the utmost concern. Accounting leaders considering outsourcing are often apprehensive about security and want to ensure their data has the most protection possible. Companies can mitigate this risk by creating strong governance and detailed service level agreements.

Another risk to outsourcing is cultural alignment challenges. Many outsourcing providers are in other countries where culture and even sometimes language can be challenging. If the company outsources abroad, culture and language challenges can often be managed with onboarding and clear communication protocols.

In addition, many outsourcing firms in Asia will adjust the schedules of the individuals serving the client in order to be available for more core office hours.

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing

Pros    

• Cost efficiency
• Access to expertise
• Scalability    

Cons

• Potential loss of control
• Dependency on vendor
• Data security risks

Consider Regional Options

An option within outsourcing is “nearsourcing.” The concept of nearsourcing shifts work to lower-cost regions within similar time zones.

Many companies prefer their work to be performed within the United States because it can provide true cost savings without sacrificing real-time collaboration. Organizations often find that communication is improved compared to offshore models – which are often in different time zones.

Another huge benefit for nearsourcing is it creates the ability for companies to access regional talent pools for specialized skills. If there is a specific skillset that is desired, opening the options to regional talent can allow for organizational agility without introducing global complexities.

There are many options to consider when choosing an outsource provider and when evaluating the right fit: it’s important to consider regions with cultural alignment and strong talent pools. This isn’t always obvious, but as the evaluation process unfolds, these considerations can make or break the success of the outsourcing arrangement.

2. Shared Service Centers (SSCs)

An SSC is a centralized unit within an organization responsible for executing specific operational tasks across a variety of business functions. Areas such as accounting, human resources, IT, and procurement can often find the ability to streamline processes to establish cost efficiencies and time savings. An SSC serves as a dedicated point of service that brings together the right resources and skills to support an entire organization.

Upon centralizing finance operations, the shared service can deliver many benefits. For starters, standardization of processes and policies go a long way in helping an organization find efficiencies and reduce key person risk. Standardization also helps leaders identify efficient ways to perform a certain task and allows for ease of movement of resources from one function to the next.  

Second, an SSC can lead to many efficiencies by reducing duplication of tasks and improving visibility when certain tasks are being completed. Anecdotally, when leading the movement of certain financial tasks into a shared service environment, we identified several processes that were duplicative in nature, and processes that were no longer necessary.

Finance organizations that have existed for a long time risk wasted efforts for processes designed at a different time, when the process made sense. Migrating finance functions into a centralized environment gives leaders visibility to make these types of observations.

Finally, an SSC helps an organization achieve more scalability for growth. Whether an organization is interested in growing through acquisition, organically, or globally, the ability to scale finance functions is imperative to the success of any growth measure an organization undertakes.

3. Strategic Reorganization

A final consideration when it comes to the people aspect of transforming a finance organization is strategic reorganization. This aligns roles with business priorities and helps create centers of excellence and a reduction in handoffs.

There are benefits to strategic reorganization, including role clarity (which can accelerate decision making and flexible staffing models, creating the ability to be agile upon a merger), system upgrade, or other major changes for an organization.

Analyzing your organizational design for the consideration of a reorganization can provide valuable insights that might not generally be obvious without looking at the organization through this lens.

A critical factor to a successful strategic reorganization is change management. Employees need to know what to expect, when to expect it, and the rationale behind the change. A solid change management plan with communication, training, and stakeholder engagement can facilitate a successful reorganization.

The Future of Finance

As we wrap up this series of articles related to finance transformation, we would be remiss if we didn’t identify some recent trends adjusting how we see the future of finance.

A hybrid delivery model combining outsourcing and shared services can help provide organizations with more flexibility.  AI-driven close is introducing machine learning for anomaly detection and predictive analytics, improving the quality of financial reporting along with stronger, more efficient processes.

Technology accelerates processes, but people drive outcomes. Finance professionals should be empowered to focus on strategic activities through upskilling, cultural alignment, and leadership commitment.

All of these are imperative components to any impactful finance transformation.