Beyond financials is within reach

After decades in Finance, I find myself tremendously excited on a personal level about how we’re thinking differently about the future, and about the positive contribution we can make as Finance professionals for our business and for society.

Over the past few months on LinkedIn, I’ve been sharing some insights into our Finance journey at Roche. As a company we are becoming more agile, and an agile organization recognizes that no one person or group of people has all the answers. And, because finance strategy reflects the special circumstances of a particular company and industry, there’s no competitive risk in sharing learnings and experiences from the different paths taken. 

Alongside our deep internal discussions and collaboration with experts from the Boston Consulting Group, I’ve been engaging with a diverse group of leading Finance professionals from major global companies. All of this has led us to three key conclusions:

• Finance strategies can and should be closely related to an organization’s purpose - this proves to be a real differentiator.
• Most Finance organizations are establishing shared service centers and / or investing in digital. But it’s key to take a comprehensive approach, pushing on all fronts to create meaningful change in how we do things.
• There is a broad awareness of the importance of agility and new ways of working. At the same time, there are significant differences in how Finance organizations are transforming to work in agile ways, applying a learning approach, and actively breaking down silos.

We’ve developed five hypotheses for the future of Finance (summarized below), which call on us to broaden our perspective and embrace our potential for impact beyond traditional financials.

At Roche, we have a clear vision of the future of Finance – one in which the function is front and center, helping to drive performance holistically across the enterprise, and operating as a living system that’s designed for collaboration and innovation, driving outcomes through an effective and inclusive network across and beyond Finance.

Where we’re coming from

Our Roche purpose of “doing now what patients need next” means we believe it’s urgent to deliver medical solutions right now – even as we develop innovations for the future. Ultimately, our success as a company is rooted in our ability to translate science into diagnostics and therapies that reduce human suffering and help people live longer, healthier lives. 

In 2020, the “doing now” part of our purpose translated into 29 million patients treated with our medicines, and 23 billion tests conducted with our diagnostics products. The “need next” part means bigger investment in R&D than any other company in our industry. This has huge implications for Finance.

At the same time, Roche operates in a business landscape that is continuously changing at an ever-increasing pace. For example, the entry of biosimilars is driving a huge transition in our portfolio, and the increasing digitalization in healthcare offers tremendous opportunities (as well as an inherent risk if we don’t keep pace). 

Our traditional model for Finance at Roche, which aligned with divisions and operational units, served the business well for decades. Finance was a consistently solid provider of expertise that ensured transparency, compliance, and responsible asset management. But we’ve known for some time that what made us successful in the past, would not make us successful going forward.

What we believe the future holds

Based on our internal and peer-to-peer discussions as well as external research, we believe we can make the following assumptions about what Finance will look and feel like in the future (see a more detailed explanation of these in a joint article produced with Boston Consulting Group): 

Key elements on our journey

Building on our Roche purpose, and aligned with our hypotheses about the future of Finance, we introduced some key transformational elements to help us create a more agile, patient-centric Finance function. Rather than take a top-down approach, these elements were developed through a series of sprints by a diverse group of volunteers from multiple functions across the organization. 

• The first of these transformational elements was a new framework for Finance, which describes the unique ways we can contribute as Finance to Roche’s purpose. 

• We also established a set of mindsets and behaviors that will be integral to how we work across Finance. By embedding these across the organization, we’ll create a culture that brings our Finance Framework to life while allowing each of us to bring our best selves to work every day.
• We identified some "non-negotiable" skills that everyone in Finance needs. These will improve individual profiles, allowing employees to move more easily between different parts of the business, and giving us the ability to have impact across the organization and beyond.
• Finally, we introduced some bold ambitions for Finance, which signal the magnitude of the impact we’re striving for. These are all about leveraging shared service centers where it makes sense, establishing end-to-end processes, living our mindsets and behaviors, and being more entrepreneurial. If we get everything right, Finance at Roche will be an even more exciting place to work – and at the same time we’ll free up significant funds for re-investment in R&D.

Step by step towards the future

We’ve made progress, but there is still lots to do. The good news is that – in thought and action – we have the right ingredients in place.

• What started out as a group of shared service centers is now a cross-functional and global business solutions organization. Over 2,200 highly qualified, experienced and driven Roche Services & Solutions employees in Budapest (Hungary), San José (Costa Rica) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) provide end-to-end business services and solutions for Finance, Procurement, IT, Communications and beyond.
• We are in the process of building an integrated systems backbone for the company based on the latest SAP ERP technology. This is a critical enabler for key benefits in the areas of business insights, risk and compliance, operations, productivity, speed and flexibility.
• We are establishing an enterprise Center of Excellence for Finance, which brings together finance leaders and experts in business planning, enterprise financials and reporting, analytics and insights, and digital. 
• We are moving away from finance business partnering, which tends to encourage siloed thinking, to finance enterprise partnering, which is firmly anchored in our Finance Framework. Finance Enterprise Partners are business-savvy professionals who can put themselves in the shoes of their stakeholders, helping them to navigate the polarities of a complex world as we collectively strive for integrated solutions across Pharma, Diagnostics, and Insights. 

We will continue to evolve, but our direction is clear: Finance at Roche is setting its sights on more impact for patients than ever before. As we continue to engage broadly on this topic, I’m always curious to hear new insights. What a fantastic opportunity to learn and grow as Finance professionals!