Intiger deal is about the next frontier of business process outsourcing in Fin.Planning & Analysis

After making a lots research like many other posters here (thanks to them) I now believe that SRT/Intiger deal is really big thing.

It's mainly about the offshore outsourcing of business process in Financial Planning & Analysis. This type of business process is already being used extensively by the multinational global firms, but now it is being the next frontier for the Australian financial companies.

And as the first time in Australia, SRT/Intiger will do that.  

That's why this was said on SRT's anns. on 24th of Dec.:
"The Business owns proprietary financial planning software and has a track record of delivering the industry’s first scalable offshore processing platform. Star Striker believes the Business has the potential to disrupt and revolutionise the financial planning industry."

Thanks to "pfrogy" that he already mentioned about this big thing on his post about CPA Australia's Report on the other thread but got only 10 TU because not many people can see the once in a life time opportunity here.  

SRT/INTEGAR WILL TARGET LARGEST DEALER GROUPS AND 4 BIG BANKS FOR BEING THEIR OFFSHORE PROCESSING PLATFORMS

After reading the papers below (Deloitte and Cognizant) I also now believe that SRT's target as customer base will not be the individual financial planners and small dealer groups, but it will be biggest dealer groups (AMP, Hilltop, etc) and 4 big banks.

Here are the links to those documents below. These are very important documents for someone who wants to understand what is SRT's Intiger acquisition is about.

Deloitte: (Private company -220k members and employees)
Financial Planning & Analysis - The Next Frontier of Business Process Outsourcing?

Cognizant: (Public company - $35b MC, 140k members  and employees)
Moving Financial Planning and Analysis to the Next Level

Deloitte says;


"In the past two decades, we have found that CFOs of large global companies have grown increasingly comfortable outsourcing transactional elements of their
finance function; however, many remain apprehensive about outsourcing more complex, Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) processes. Nevertheless, some leading companies are exploring FP&A outsourcing as a means to develop a competitive advantage by reducing costs and increasing efficiency amongst a traditionally high cost, skill intensive set of finance activities."

"While there are additional complexities associated with outsourcing FP&A, vendors have worked diligently to develop capabilities and tools to make FP&A outsourcing a viable option. FP&A typically requires more judgment and finance experience than other functions and, therefore can provide significant potential for savings from automation, centralisation, standardisation and outsourcing. Additionally, many of these processes are judgment based, requiring a close working relationship with business users and corporate leadership. Vendors are focusing on developed, highly educated offshore talent with significant functional knowledge and experience in FP&A to support these offerings with marquee clients."

"FP&A outsourcing is becoming the next process to outsource for many companies on the leading edge. We expect that over the next few years, FP&A outsourcing will become an increasingly standard offering in the marketplace, as companies seek to
achieve additional savings, improve capabilities and reduce cycle times."


Got it?
If not, I suggest you to read the full paper (link above)


Now, Cognizant says;
"Many finance organizations are still fighting the age-old battle to optimize efficiency and effectiveness. In today’s dynamic global economy, however, agility and performance are challenges that finance must now conquer."

"Increasing FP&A activities, while shrinking the overall finance function budget, will require a large reduction in non-FP&A finance activities, as well as a more cost-effective way to deliver FP&A. Finance and accounting outsourcing (FAO) is one effective way to accomplish the required transformation while improving agility (see Figure 3, next page)."



"All finance transaction processing (e.g., AP, AR, GL, FA) can be outsourced, as well as select compliance activities (e.g., routine statutory filings, audit support). Transaction processing and compliance outsourcing yields significant savings (typically 30% to 50%, we have found) as a result of provider scale, consolidation, increased automation, process reengineering and cost arbitrage from relocating work to lower cost locations."

"In addition to cost reduction, FAO provides additional process improvements, such as tighter controls from the separation of duties, up-to-date process documentation, more comprehensive metrics reporting, better audit trails and heightened  transparency."

"Another significant lever to pull is the outsourcing of portions of FP&A. With 25% of finance’s budget taken up by FP&A,3 there is considerable scope for cost savings. Of course, some portions of FP&A should always be kept in-house, such as
assigning a finance leader to each unit to partner with the business, explain results, lead the budget process, etc."

"From our discussions with many finance organizations, we have observed that business analysts typically spend over 50% of their time gathering, aggregating and scrubbing data. The use of highly skilled and highly paid business analysts to perform basic data manipulation is a waste of scarce talent. Outsourcing the data management tasks provides additional benefits"

"These companies have also reaped the benefits of FP&A outsourcing beyond cost reduction, such as reporting cycle-time reduction or increased forecasting accuracy or productivity"




I don't think those very important benefits of offshore outsourcing would be missed by the big dealer groups and big 4 banks.

That's all I can say. I need to buy more today.