Seminar preview

Financial Management, Nov 2003

Household goods firm Unilever reorganised its finance function last year as part of its "Path to growth" restructuring scheme, which aims to double the company's growth rate by 2004. Paul Baumann, director of the finance academy at Unilever, and Scott Parker, managing director at Atos KPMG Consulting, will tell the conference how the companies worked together to develop a finance function that could deliver the programme.

As part of the changes, Unilever introduced e-finance technology and worked to transform the role of the finance team from control and reporting to focusing on value creation. It has also adopted numerous best-practice process improvements. Baumann will discuss the approach it adopted to build consensus and commitment around the vision; the priorities that the firm identified for action; the role of people, processes and technology in creating a high-performance finance function; the critical steps that were essential in ensuring a successful transformation; and the benefits that the business is enjoying today.