Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Management Consulting Services

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Magic Quadrant for Financial Management Consulting Services Published: 19 December 2011

Analyst(s): Jacqueline Heng

This Magic Quadrant assesses the financial management consulting capabilities of 10 global consulting firms. Use this Magic Quadrant to identify and evaluate the right consultants to support your finance function consulting needs.

What You Need to Know Deep understanding of a client's finance organizational environment remains a key reason why a financial management consultant is able to continue its strategic business relationship with a client. Transformation of a finance organization is strategic and typically a long arduous journey, with many painful lessons learned between the consultant and client. A deep relationship is formed, and very often CFOs are reluctant to switch consulting firms. Hence, a key nuance of the market is that relationships intrinsically drive value, something that at times is difficult to quantify and discern. From Gartner's ongoing conversations with CFOs, we have seen that CFOs know exactly what they want to reap from each consulting firm and will use multiple firms they have deep relationships with to help them through their transformation. New entrants will find it difficult to break into new relationships with CFOs; however, referrals from CIOs or even purchasing officers (with whom such upstarts may have had good prior relationships that may have yielded a deep understanding of the client's environment from past projects) can help with an entrance into the realm of the CFO. That said, CFOs will indeed switch their consulting firm when the following occurs: ■

The consulting firm lacks a needed deep finance understanding, as well as the ability and capability to work out the intricacies and links with specific finance areas, such as audit, tax, risk or sustainability.

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The consulting firm has a gap in its on-site geographic reach.

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The customer experience or (less often) the chemistry between client and consultant was so negative that the CFO is willing to drop the consulting firm from the next project.

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When good senior consultants or partners with strong in-depth industry expertise move from one consulting firm to another, the CFO may choose to move with these consultants because of their consulting strengths.

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An alternative consulting firm offers a lower price for the same service offering.

Finance function clients reading this research should read the profile write-ups of each consultant in this Magic Quadrant to match their finance function needs. Each consultant has strengths in different areas and should not be ignored just because it is not found in the Leaders quadrant.

Magic Quadrant Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Financial Management Consulting Services

Source: Gartner (December 2011)

Market Overview This is a mature market. The consultants evaluated here have deep strengths in the areas they differentiate and position in. Finance function clients are fully aware of how to leverage these strengths for their needs. These consultants all have good relationships with their clients at the senior partner level; have good supportive programs, such as CFO forums and published thought leadership pieces; and have a good understanding of the marketplace. While better efficiency and cost savings are constant requirements, what has changed are the following: ■

The increasing entanglement of business issues with finance issues (for example, risk management issues wrapped around finance issues).

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The dependency on increased use of technology (such as ERP, corporate performance management and business intelligence [BI]) in conjunction with advisory services to provide cost savings and efficiencies in process improvement.

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The heavier reliance on the consulting firm to provide forums, ideas and shared dialogues for clarity of information and issues.

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The finance environment is no longer limited to just the finance function, but it includes all aspects of the organization's different business functions as well, including information on sales and revenue from its supply chain, sustainability attitude, risk management factors, and so forth.

Geographic Spread of Deep Finance Experts and Strategic Finance "Thoughtware" Are Fundamental In the financial management consulting market, having a deep finance practice, with core finance strategic strengths, is fundamental. Although it seems counterintuitive for Gartner to state an obvious fact, consulting firms that want to succeed in the leadership space cannot ignore having a large, consistent, well-spread-out (geographywise) and skilled finance resource that understands and is able to interpret financial data and understands the complexities of taxation. In addition, they should extend their financial portfolio offerings to include an active and wider set of integrated finance strategy offerings and an active incubator engine of finance research and knowledge to help CFO clients and internal finance consultants be engaged in current finance issues. Clients have told Gartner that they are increasingly encountering in projects more business-oriented consultants who do not question the data nor the methodologies enough and lack an in-depth understanding of finance. Finance and regulatory consultants, such as KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte, and Ernst & Young, have the advantage of leveraging their deep knowledge and resources from their audit, finance, tax, treasury, regulatory, supply chain, sustainability and risk practices and leveraging their reputations as authorities (being advisers to regulatory authorities) on finance and risk matters. CFOs regularly seek advice from these consultants on strategic finance and risk issues that are not just focused on optimizing finance function processes, especially if they do not have these deep finance capabilities in-house. At the same time, these consultants have been investing in their optimization consulting capabilities. Business consultants are increasingly looked upon as equally good alternative competitors, especially in the finance optimization area. Moreover, some larger clients have good in-house finance expertise to create their own finance strategy to fill in the gaps where business consultants lack in or would have used a finance consultant firm earlier in the project. Where business consultants are more successful in the financial management consulting space, compared with their business consulting peers, is when they have widened their finance strategy portfolio to encompass a richer finance strategy, risk and compliance experience and have increased on-site geographic resources to meet and support current and new client demands. The ability to grow these additional finance offerings from a supplementary offering into a stronger

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finance support offering, as well as the ability to interlink and integrate these portfolios, is a valueadd for the client to experience a more complete finance consulting experience. Consultants with strong finance tools have the ability to encase strong finance processes around it to reduce human tasks and produce efficiencies, but this cannot replace finance "thoughtware" (or thought leadership). The overall strength of the consulting firm's finance positioning lies in how seeped it is in strategic finance issues and what conversations a C-level finance client has with a consultant to resolve strategic finance problems that are not just focused on operational issues. On-site geographic presence remains an important aspect for this coverage as investments flow out of mature economies from the West to the emerging markets in the East, especially in situations of consultants moving with clients into these new markets. Cultural and language challenges can pose real disadvantages to a consultant.

Holistic Consultants Are Needed Financial management consultants are evolving to be more holistic, with expertise in verticals, finance, risk, business, technology know-how and, above all, knowing how to delight the client. As part of our research for this Magic Quadrant, client references told Gartner that the top five most important factors they consider when selecting a financial management consultant are the following: ■

Strong consulting competence (a combination of personal style/personal chemistry, problem diagnosis skills, responsiveness, true advisory skills, professionalism and long-term relationship orientation that separates a professional management consultant from someone who does consulting only sometimes)

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Team members proposed for projects (this emphasizes team dynamics)

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Value for money of contracted service (this is in the contracting terms)

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Project management skills

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Strong and deep business process consulting background

Additionally, the team's chemistry with the client's team is important, coupled with geographic factors; at times, language can become a real challenge (see "Case Study: Benefits and Pitfalls of Seeking Faster Financial Close and Better Management Information"). We can summarize this as delighting the customer. This can be interpreted as the type and quality of the pool of consultants "needed now." The unfortunate reality is, globally, there is a shortage of such holistic consultants available. Additionally, trying to forecast needed consulting resources and keeping talent are challenges to this business. It is not uncommon for consulting firms to attract capable consultants from competitive firms through benefits such as increased salary. Poaching, scaling up and down of a consulting team due to the consulting pipeline and longevity of projects, and movement of consultants from one firm to another are the unfortunate nature of this business. Practice leaders of consulting firms must work out the best short-term solutions within their organizations to plug these gaps of capabilities and make it transparent to the client; plugging Page 4 of 24

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teams with large volumes of junior consultants can have its own problems. Consulting firms need to minimize the small and often annoying distractions that emerge from the use of junior consultants on client projects. During client interviews and reference checks, clients have told Gartner of how, in the short term, consulting firms have tried to minimize this practice. Some examples include not paying for junior consultants' time and using only senior consultants to interact with clients.

CFO Outreach and Support Programs Incubative thinking and research are available from every consultant in this Magic Quadrant in the form of CFO support, training and outreach programs. This is actively leveraged by clients, both CFOs and CIOs. This may be in the form of CFO research findings, roundtable forums, CFO and CIO communities, and thought leadership pieces. This has become an essential value-add for the CFO to further understand the hot topics and issues surrounding the finance function. Some programs are more sophisticated and have been running longer than others. Gartner sees that these programs as being of fundamental value-add to the client and internally for the consulting firm to grow in knowledge; however, these programs can turn into marketing and sales "noise" and hence will no longer be seen as a value-add to the client but as an annoyance. Consulting firms with these support programs need to keep from overloading the CFO with information, and differentiation needs to be made from one consulting house to another; otherwise, efforts in this space will not be valued by the CFO.

Investments in Innovation In this Magic Quadrant, we primarily evaluate consultants on their ability to help finance function clients discern, link, integrate and troubleshoot the upfront finance function, as well as their ability to provide advice on how technology will impact differing business environments and not their ability to implement technology. Hence, a leadership in finance is key to this analysis. However, due to the heavier reliance on process efficiencies, clients are also looking at how innovative a consultant is in its offerings. During our interviews, more than half (67%) of references said that a consultant needed to have innovation capabilities to support the finance function, to which 63% of these clients ascribed an extremely important rating. Additionally, 53% of clients said they would disqualify a consultant during the selection process if the consultant did not have a leading innovation capability. This is all despite the fact that, in reality, the project in question may not have needed any form of demonstrable simulation. Clients still need to know that the consulting firm is at the top of its game in coming up with new, creative and automated measures for the client when needed. Hence, Gartner looked at this factor as a consulting firm having the ability to continually invest in the creation of innovation.

Market Definition/Description This Magic Quadrant is focused on global financial management consulting project-based services for North America, Europe, Asia/Pacific, Japan and Latin America. Solution implementation services and outsourcing are not assessed in this Magic Quadrant. These sets of services include offerings such as:

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Finance transformation ■

Change management

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Performance improvement

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Business process improvement

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Finance advisory

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Governance, risk and compliance (GRC) in the finance function

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Finance and accounting (F&A) shared services

In this Magic Quadrant, Gartner is focused on finance management consulting services that begin with the consulting phase and encompass any type of consulting directed at improving or enhancing the finance function and its performance. This research evaluates service providers only on their project-based finance management consulting services. It does not evaluate them on their managed service or outsourcing projects or stand-alone IT implementation projects. Nor does it evaluate them in areas of corporate finance, such as tax and treasury strategy, capital markets, and acquisition and divestiture activities. However, a consultant's capabilities in these areas may impact an overall client satisfaction experience with the offered consulting services as this coverage is focused on the finance function.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria This research evaluates service providers only on their project-based financial management consulting services. These service providers should have the following: ■

Evidence of strategies and methodologies that have been applied in client engagements: ■

At least 15 referenceable financial management consulting service deals

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A minimum threshold of at least $220 million in overall financial management advisory global revenue

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A global company, with commitment to the F&A marketplace in financial management consulting services: ■

Market share and clientele with presence in more than two major regions (North America, Western Europe, Japan, Asia/Pacific or Latin America)

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An ability to serve clients globally

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A physical financial management consulting practice present in more than two major regions (North America, Western Europe, Japan, Asia/Pacific or Latin America)

Consultants were excluded if they did not meet the functional or revenue criteria or if they were unable to provide adequate referenceability. This Magic Quadrant includes all vendors in a given sector; that is, consulting services, which begin with the assessment phase and lead into the design and build phase of a life cycle perspective.

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Companies considered for evaluation in this Magic Quadrant research are those that act as advisors and may also provide implementation services that encompass most or all levels of a solution, as outlined above. Further, providers will also be evaluated in more detail, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative criteria. Note that vendors cannot elect to be excluded from a Magic Quadrant, assuming they meet the inclusion criteria.

Added This is a new Magic Quadrant. Protiviti is the new addition to the consultants assessed for this coverage area. The first assessment of this coverage area was a MarketScope, published in December 2009. This assessment was converted into a Magic Quadrant to discern the differentiation in strengths.

Dropped No vendors were dropped since this is a new Magic Quadrant.

Evaluation Criteria Ability to Execute The following are the criteria that we considered in the evaluation of vendors' ability to execute in this Magic Quadrant (see Table 1 for the weightings associated with each criterion). Product/Service — Core goods and services offered by the consultant that competes in/serves the defined market. This encompasses current service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so forth, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria. Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization): — Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood of the individual business unit to continue to invest in the product, continue offering the product, and advancing the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products. Sales Execution/Pricing: The consultant's capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and contracting expertise. Market Responsiveness and Track Record: This includes the consultant's ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customers' needs evolve, and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the consultant's history of responsiveness. Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase

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awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This mind share can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional activities, thought leadership, and word-of-mouth and sales activities. Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be successful with financial transformation deals being evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customers receive financial transformation consulting support, strategic account support and any IT consulting transition support to ensure that financial transformation delivery is in lock-step with their business. This can also include ancillary tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-level agreements and so forth. Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis. Table 1. Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria Evaluation Criteria

Weighting

Product/Service

Standard

Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization)

Standard

Sales Execution/Pricing

Standard

Market Responsiveness and Track Record

High

Marketing Execution

Low

Customer Experience

High

Operations

Standard

Source: Gartner (December 2011)

Completeness of Vision The following are the criteria we considered in the evaluation of vendors' completeness of vision in this Magic Quadrant (see Table 2 for the weightings associated with each criterion). Market Understanding: Ability of the consultant to understand buyers' needs and translate these needs into financial transformation relationships. Consultants that show the highest degree of vision listen and understand buyers' wants and needs, and they can shape or enhance those wants with their added vision. Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.

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Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling consulting services that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service, and communications affiliates that extend the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services, and the customer base. Offering (Product) Strategy: A consultant's approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology, and feature set as they map to current and future requirements. Business Model: The soundness and logic of a consultant's underlying business proposition. Vertical/Industry Strategy: The consultant's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including verticals. Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, or defensive or pre-emptive purposes. The consultant's reputation as a "thought leader" and innovator also will be evaluated. Geographic Strategy: The consultant's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries, as appropriate for those geographies and markets. Table 2. Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria Evaluation Criteria

Weighting

Market Understanding

High

Marketing Strategy

Low

Sales Strategy

Standard

Offering (Product) Strategy

Standard

Business Model

Standard

Vertical/Industry Strategy

Standard

Innovation

High

Geographic Strategy

High

Source: Gartner (December 2011)

Leaders Leaders are performing well today, with a clear vision of market-building competencies to sustain their leadership position in this space. The consultants in this quadrant generally share superior

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market understanding, vision, comprehensive methodologies and road maps. They have the global geographic reach to support their on-site clients and have well-communicated and well-marketed sales offerings. They also have the ability to advise regulators and assist financially stricken leading businesses in crisis.

Challengers Challengers execute reasonably well today, but they have yet to capitalize on their vision. For consultants in this quadrant, increased attention to sales and marketing, increasing their finance portfolio of offerings, and building up the number of on-site finance consultants will help improve future alignment to existing clients and new prospects.

Visionaries Visionaries have a clear vision of market direction and are focused on preparing for that, especially with innovative technology solutions, but they still can improve the scale and scope of service delivery. For the consultant in this quadrant, time and attention to executing visionary service and delivery plans will help it capitalize on its vision with new prospects.

Niche Players Niche consultants typically focus on particular market segments, such as Europe-based clients, public-sector clients, or manufacturing sector or midsize organizations and often support only those services that apply to those targeted segments. For this Magic Quadrant, there are no Niche Players.

Vendor Strengths and Cautions Accenture Accenture's finance and performance management services cover the three domains of corporate finance, enterprise performance management and finance operations. These domains cut horizontally across Accenture's five vertical sectors of communications and high tech, financial services, health and public services, products, and resources. Accenture markets its services to large organizations — the G1000; it does not typically target small or midsize companies. Its corporate finance coverage is wider compared with its non-Big Four business consulting peers, because it includes tax, postmerger integration, trading operations and real estate. Accenture also offers a broad array of finance operations, shared services, analytics, performance management and risk management services. It has an extensive client-facing presence globally across all major country markets. Strengths ■

Market understanding — Accenture's financial management consulting services cut across finance operations, corporate finance, performance management and risk to help enterprises establish high-performing finance functions. Accenture does not deliver audit-related services

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since it is not an accounting firm. Since Gartner's 2009 analysis of this market, Accenture has invested in a larger range of corporate finance services to include Accenture Real Estate Solutions and Accenture Benchmarking Solutions. It also expanded its GRC and finance postmerger integration offerings. Clients who choose to work with Accenture know what they require from Accenture in terms of its ability to integrate and deliver finance, business and technology expertise. ■

Geography — Accenture has one of the more extensive on-site consulting teams globally and specifically an on-site presence in the markets of Asia/Pacific.

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Market responsiveness and track record — Accenture has proved time again that it has the ability to scale up and down quickly in terms of resources on its projects. In addition, Accenture is quick in reading changes in the marketplace and quickly addresses gaps in its capabilities through building up its internal consulting teams.

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Customer experience — Accenture's consultants generally scored high ratings for client collaboration. Clients cited a strong perception that Accenture was "there for them" in the long term, and its emotional intelligence factor is strong, particularly in patience and understanding of client problems. This is one of Accenture's differentiators, cited by many clients. This characteristic is something that fundamentally permeates Accenture's corporate culture across the workforce.

Cautions ■

Operations — Accenture needs to build up its junior consulting team in terms of hiring consultants who have both finance and business acumen. Its leaders need more junior consultants with fundamental levels of finance acumen and comfort with "finance speak." Additionally, it needs to build consulting competency in this rank of junior consultants in order for clients to have a consistent experience with Accenture.

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Sales execution/pricing — When Accenture's client references were asked if they would switch to lower-priced consultants with the same offerings, their responses suggested an aboveaverage likelihood of switching.

Capgemini Capgemini's financial management consulting service team goes to market from a vertical industry perspective that spans both commercial and public sectors, with an emphasis on performance management and analytics, operational effectiveness, and corporate service models. Capgemini's corporate culture of collaboration and leveraging group assets from its business process outsourcing and technology divisions is something it imparts to its engagements with clients. The financial management team is part of its overall Capgemini consulting practice, the strategy and transformation brand of the Capgemini Group. Its strong focus on business consulting is supported by comprehensive models, methodologies and approaches like its Accelerated Solutions Environment, Global Process Model, APQC benchmarking, and Finance and Accounting Fundamentals solutions book. Capgemini's finance strategy offerings extend into pre- and postintegration merger and acquisition (M&A) activities, shareholder value analysis, treasury,

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business continuity, internal controls, and compliance, enabling it to support clients who look for end-to-end services. Strengths ■

Innovation — Capgemini's capabilities in building up new innovative finance blueprints (such as the Capgemini Global Process Model) and technology solutions is encouraging. Its pervasive use of analytics has received positive traction. Capgemini acquired BI Consulting Group and Prosodie to build up its BI and cloud capabilities and is extending its groupwide focus on digital transformation toward the finance function.

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Customer experience — Capgemini clients cite their longevity with the company because of its culture of client intimacy. Its clients also use the word "flexible" to describe Capgemini's strengths locally. Capgemini's differentiation is clear in its local and flexible approach, and its consultants strive to delight their clients. Due to its smaller teams, Capgemini is more nimble, with fewer challenges related to escalation of processes and problems.

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Sales execution/pricing — When Capgemini's clients were asked if they would switch to lowerpriced consultants with the same offerings, their responses suggested an above-average likelihood to not switch.

Cautions ■

Geography — Capgemini still has a very strong European footprint, relative to its peers. Capgemini is leaner in markets outside this region, such as Australia, India and the U.S. Capgemini's on-site geographic coverage is improving in markets with its newer presence in China and Latin America (and it's starting to build presence in markets such as the Middle East and Vietnam). For a sustainable long-term vision, Capgemini needs to aggressively improve its locally based consulting presence by building and training on-site resources in new markets, particularly since European clients have a renewed focus on moving deeper into regions such as Asia/Pacific and the Middle East.

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Marketing strategy and market understanding — In the last few years, Capgemini has been conservative in its approach to new markets and new offerings due to keeping a stringent eye on the bottom line. Gartner sees annual progression in the strides it is taking, but Capgemini needs to aggressively reinforce its marketing strategy to current and potential new clients to capitalize further in growth markets. Capgemini needs to articulate, market, deploy, launch or pilot newly developed solutions quickly to markets outside Europe, especially since the leading companies from new emerging markets are constantly seeking new solutions to leapfrog competition. This is even more important as investments flow away from Europe due to the economic situation.

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Market responsiveness and track record — Capgemini needs to build up a structured risk management strategic consulting practice to create thought leadership and tightly link risk issues to compliance and the finance function. Risk resources are available now within the firm, including enterprise risk management, anti-money-laundering and business continuity solutions, and they are strongly supported within its financial services vertical. However, building up and

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integrating a core and large global team of risk competencies and resources completely dedicated to focus on risks issues in all sectors is essential.

CSC CSC's overall corporate value proposition for finance advisory services has a strong emphasis on business transformation and technology through its Catalyst methodology and approach and use of its proprietary repeatable business solution blueprints. Like most of its peers, CSC's overall corporate strategy is vertically driven, focused on the public sector; financial services; manufacturing/aerospace and defense, technology and consumer services, health services, and chemical, energy and natural resources. CSC's financial management consulting services cover the areas of finance strategy and transformation, monitoring and management activities, and meeting compliance requirements. Strengths ■

Market Understanding: Clients cited CSC's good understanding of the technology landscape and technical skills tied to finance processes. CSC continues to strengthen its business operations coverage (through acquisitions such as Vixia in Sao Paulo) in core operations service, specifically in the insurance, reinsurance and financial services areas.

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Innovation: CSC was ranked top when all clients were asked to rate a list of consultants based on their strong innovation capabilities to the finance function. CSC's innovation is validated through its numerous blueprint frameworks with prebuilt solutions and its capabilities in providing and managing data-sensitive cloud services to government agencies.

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Market Responsiveness and Track Record: CSC has the distinct advantage of driving differentiation through its cloud-based activities. It can educate CFO clients, for example, and alleviate their fears concerning risk and security for finance in the cloud by harnessing its expertise and best practices in providing cloud services to various ministries of defense departments worldwide.

Cautions ■

Geography: CSC's references provided a lower rating for the company's geographic reach, which supports Gartner's view that, in terms of on-site financial consulting capabilities, CSC is not as well-distributed across the globe when compared with its large business consulting team worldwide.

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Sales Execution/Pricing: When asked if they would switch to lower-priced consultants with the same offerings, CSC's clients suggested an above-average likelihood to switch.

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Operations: CSC needs to improve on its internal project team's collaboration with clients' internal teams as its ratings in this area were not strong. Many times, several different CSC teams will engage with a client's internal team, with consultants from finance, business and optimization. Internal collaboration between these teams and with the client is important in providing a smooth, easy and high-quality client interaction experience.

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Customer Experience: CSC needs to increase its efforts on strengthening the analytical capabilities of its global consulting team, especially its consulting competence in terms of deeper finance and business understanding, as opposed to simply finance applications and rote processes. Ratings from CSC clients validated this, with CSC receiving good scores on technical capabilities but lower scores on consulting capabilities.

Deloitte Deloitte, as one of the Big Four accounting and finance firms, offers a full suite of finance advisory services. It was the only firm among its peers that did not sell off its advisory business and has been in this area for more than 65 years. Compared with its peers in this particular area, Deloitte has the largest consulting practice in terms of revenue size and number of full-time finance advisory consultants. It also has a large finance technology component. Deloitte also has global leadership and regional structures in regard to managing a consistent and more integrated approach to its global clients wanting global contracts and geographic scale. In addition, Deloitte has targeted midmarket finance offerings in some country markets. Strengths ■

Market Understanding: As one of the Big Four and an advisor to regulators and governments, Deloitte enjoys a reputation as having a complete finance vision, being able to advise on everything related to finance. Its advantage of scale in terms of finance domain expertise also enables the company to encapsulate the emerging areas of risk and sustainability issues around the finance function. Among the Big Four assessed, Deloitte is the largest in terms of size and revenue of its financial management contribution.

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Offering Strategy: Deloitte has deep, comprehensive financial management value maps and methodologies (such as the Four Faces Framework, Finance Transformation Assessment Wheel, FAST methodology, Finance Transformation Diagnostic Tool and Finance Transformation Capability Maturity Model), which its clients highly appreciate. Clients told us that they appreciate Deloitte's vision and models and that they felt the company's consultants were very knowledgeable and experienced.

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Market Responsiveness and Track Record: Clients mentioned Deloitte as being flexible and adaptable. Over the years, Gartner has seen Deloitte acquiring targeted firms to either overcome gaps in its current offerings or for long-term strategic plans. Its most recent acquisition, Oco, is a SaaS business analytics firm.

Cautions ■

Customer Experience: Deloitte's clients provided lower ratings on cultural fit and geographic reach. On a positive note, Deloitte's competence is good; its clients repeatedly told Gartner that Deloitte's consultants fully understood their business, requirements and culture.

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Operations: Deloitte's clients provided lower ratings for collaboration between Deloitte's consultants and the clients' internal teams, although its project management skills yielded good ratings.

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Ernst & Young Ernst & Young is one of the Big Four accounting and finance firms and offers a full suite of finance management consulting offerings. Structurally, Ernst & Young is still a membership network of global firms, but its operations are now fully integrated into its major regions of the Americas; Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA); and Asia/Pacific (with the exception of Japan). It considers itself an expert in addressing and linking cross-functional finance issues (such as tax, treasury, performance process, regulation, risk and transaction issues) and does not look at finance issues in isolation. Ernst & Young also has strengthened its technology expertise. The company is very clear in its message that technology implementation is not its core value proposition. Involved with projects relating to reporting, analytics and business performance management, Ernst & Young expects to be part of the implementation to see through the entire process it advises on. The company services global, regional, national and midmarket clients. Strengths ■

Market Understanding: As one of the Big Four and as an advisor to regulators and governments, Ernst & Young enjoys a reputation as having a complete finance vision, being able to advise on "everything finance." Its advantage of scale in terms of the number of its finance domain experts also enables it to cover the related areas of GRC and emerging sustainability issues around the finance function. Its clients recognize Ernst & Young as an expert in its field.

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Marketing Strategy: Ernst & Young goes to market with a full suite of finance management consulting offerings and is clear in its value proposition that it is focused on performance improvement services and that it does not typically provide full-scale enterprisewide ERP implementations for its clients. However, Ernst & Young works closely with its clients and independent integrators and believes that the "win-win 2-provider model" that is developed with system integrators provides a seamless relationship to clients. The two-provider model enables and enhances Ernst & Young's objectivity and aligns with the client's best interests by minimizing risk and structuring design and implementation discipline throughout the program.

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Market Responsiveness and Track Record: Gartner has seen Ernst & Young responding to the marketplace through its acquisitions, such as that of ISA Consulting (Americas) and Partake Consulting (EMEIA) and the creation of its Analytics Solutions Center. The company has also greatly strengthened its technology team of resources and created standardized process benchmarking toolkits.

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Sales Execution/Pricing: Ernst & Young clients, when asked if they would switch to lower-priced consultants with the same offerings, suggested an above-average likelihood to not switch.

Cautions ■

Innovation: Ernst & Young continues to invest in innovation through acquisitions of analytic solutions. It has recently built up its Analytics Solutions team and acquired ISA Consulting (Americas) in April and Partake Consulting (EMEIA) in May to strengthen its BI, business process management and data integration services in response to market demand. As this

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initiative is fairly recent, Ernst & Young's potential in this area is still to be fully leveraged by clients. ■

Geography: Ernst & Young continues to build its geographic scale and confidence among its clients in smaller countries.

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Customer Experience: Ernst & Young needs to build up the capabilities and consulting competence of its junior consulting workforce. On a positive note, Ernst & Young's clients positively cite its change management skills, and having the same consultants on the project bolsters familiarity with the consultants, which is an added benefit.

IBM IBM's Financial Management practice is part of its Global Business Services team. Like its overall corporate direction, IBM's Financial Management practice is vertically focused across five major vertical segments: communications, distribution, financial services, industrial and public sector. Its broad finance offerings cover the areas of organization design; strategy development; process diagnostics and improvement; cost reduction and performance improvement; and system design, development and implementation, These offerings are complemented by finance-specific business analytic software, F&A process outsourcing and global financing. IBM's finance strategy has a slightly wider perspective compared with some of its business consulting peers to include treasury, tax, cash and credit management, and analytics. Strengths ■

Market Understanding: IBM has improved its spectrum of CFO finance strategy offerings with a greater emphasis on risk management, operations, cost reduction, efficiencies and business insight. It has a comprehensive set of management tools specifically for the finance and risk officer, which includes the areas of performance management, treasury management, and cash and credit management risk integration.

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Innovation: IBM's technology skills and R&D from its software labs are superior and have often generated new automated solutions for its clients. In terms of innovation, IBM has produced enterprise management solutions such as the Finance Transformation Workbench, Enterprise Risk Management Workbench, CFO Dashboard, Maturity Model Tool and Country Financial Risk Assessment.

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Market Responsiveness and Track Record and Customer Experience: IBM's references cited examples of its consultants being flexible, skilled, responsive, dedicated and highly motivated individuals. IBM has acquired finance and risk-specific software firms, such as Cognos, Clarity, OpenPages, SPSS and, recently, Algorithmics to gain domain expertise and capabilities in finance-driven technologies.

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Marketing Strategy: IBM's client references seem less familiar with IBM's finance strategy consulting, with the company scoring below average in the following areas: overall thought leadership in finance, financial management consulting vision and finance/audit acumen. However, Gartner is aware that IBM has improved its finance strategy offering portfolio to include treasury and tax. IBM will need to strengthen and articulate its finance strategy consulting service message to the market and incorporate the newly acquired finance and riskspecific software and management tools.

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Geography: IBM references provided a lower rating for geographic reach and cultural fit, which suggests clients may not fully understand the distribution of IBM's finance strategy consulting resources.

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Operations: IBM references provided a good rating for the company's finance consultants. However, IBM's nonfinance consultants were rated lower, so IBM needs to build up collaboration among its different teams and its partners working with clients to change this perception. The number of contract consultants IBM uses on its projects (which makes team efforts more challenging) may be contributing to this perception.

KPMG KPMG did not participate or provide client references for this Magic Quadrant. Where referenced, respondent perceptions are opinions of all respondents interviewed and may not reflect KPMG's current clients for financial management consulting services during the period of the research. KPMG is one of the Big Four accounting and finance firms. Its financial management agenda is integrated across three advisory segments: management consulting (finance is covered within the financial management practice); risk consulting (finance is covered within its financial risk management practice); and transaction and restructuring (finance is covered under corporate finance). KPMG considers itself particularly known for its approach to identifying and managing various forms of risk. The company also has robust tax advisory and audit services that enhance its financial management offerings. Structurally, KPMG is a membership network of regional firms, but its operations are now fully integrated, and its services are provided locally and globally. Strengths ■

Market Understanding: KPMG is an advisor to corporations, regulators and governments, and its portfolio of finance services and finance vision is complete. The company's advantage of scale and finance domain expertise enables it to include the emerging areas of risk and sustainability issues around the finance function. Its clients recognize KPMG as an expert in its field. The company's acquisitions in 2010 included Grant Thornton's supply chain practice, IT/ Net, and Hyperion consultant Analitica to strengthen its capabilities. In 2011, KPMG acquired EquaTerra, building its strength in the shared services and outsourcing advisory area. KPMG goes to market with IBM, HP and Tata Consultancy Services.

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Cautions ■

Marketing Strategy: KPMG's current financial management strategy and messaging need further clarification for its potential clients and Gartner. Nevertheless, KPMG's financial management consulting practice is still strong and remains competitive in the marketplace.

McKinsey & Co. As part of its policy, McKinsey & Co. did not participate or provide any client references to this Magic Quadrant. Where referenced, respondent perceptions are opinions of all respondents interviewed. They are not reflective of McKinsey & Co.'s current clients for financial management consulting services during the period of the interview since McKinsey & Co. did not provide client references. McKinsey & Co.'s corporate finance advisory services cover the areas of alliances and joint ventures, corporate and capital market strategies, initial public offerings, M&As and divestitures, value-based management, real-option valuation, and financial engineering. It has a separate practice on risk. McKinsey & Co.'s business technology practice explores areas with clients related to technology-enabled service operations and ERP. The company offers an outreach CFO program through its thought leadership reports and online newsletters. Strengths ■

Offering Strategy: When all clients were asked to rate a list of consultants on their objective advice and independent services, McKinsey & Co. was ranked third.

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Market Understanding: As a long-standing management consulting expert, McKinsey & Co. has superior vision and thought leadership in finance.

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Geography: McKinsey & Co. is present in 98 global markets.

Cautions ■

Market Responsiveness and Track Record: McKinsey & Co. does not implement technology and is very clear in its message on this. There is a gap in the full finance service experience, and strategic partnerships are sometimes needed as a continuation of a project.

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Sales Execution/Pricing: McKinsey & Co. is one of the highest-priced consultants assessed in this Magic Quadrant. Clients who rejected McKinsey & Co. in a bidding situation said the company's being too expensive was often the top-of-mind reason.

Protiviti Protiviti is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Half International. It has been in the finance advisory business since 2002, and its creation was a result of the cessation of Andersen Worldwide. Protiviti's early offering started out with deep expertise in Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance and solutions, and it now considers itself a business consulting and internal audit firm, with a specialized focus on risk, advisory and transaction services. With its subsidiaries and membership firms, Page 18 of 24

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Protiviti is present in more than 60 global markets. Protiviti makes no excuse for its smaller-scale operations but leverages its size to its advantage by staying focused on the needs of clients, who repeatedly provide strong validation of this strategy. The company's finance coverage extends across finance remediation and reporting compliance, finance optimization services, performance information management, and other finance-related services, such as cost and working capital optimization, IT effectiveness and controls, litigation restructuring and investigation, risk and compliance, and internal audit and financial control services. The company uses its Protiviti Key as its consulting methodology and framework, which Protiviti considers a consistent problem-solving approach applied to all its global engagements. The company's practice cuts across the vertical sectors of finance, technology, media and communications, industrial products, energy, consumer products and services, healthcare and life science, and governments. Strengths ■

Offering Strategy: Protiviti clients provided very high ratings on its methodologies, road maps and independent advice. Clients also cited that Protiviti kept within the scope, budget and relevance in its approach. When all clients were asked to rate a list of consultants that they perceived offered objective advice and independent service, Protiviti was rated the highest.

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Customer Experience: Protiviti clients are enthusiastic and extremely positive about the company's ability to cultivate client intimacy and its consulting competency. Clients cited examples in which internal collaboration between a client's internal organization and Protiviti's project team was strong and tight. Where junior consultants would be a bane for most consulting firms, Protiviti has managed to keep client-facing interactions at least at the level of senior consultants (who generally are able to manage a client's expectations well). Beyond the company's size, Protiviti differentiates in that it is focused on what it can deliver in terms of offerings and its ability to meet clients' needs in terms of budget and expectation management — a strategy that has been strongly validated by clients.

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Sales Execution/Pricing: When asked if they would switch to lower-priced consultants with the same offerings, Protiviti clients suggested an above-average likelihood to not switch.

Cautions ■

Offering Strategy: Although Protiviti is deeply entrenched and has a reputation as a finance domain expert, it is limited to a narrower range of services. Clients recognize the fact that Protiviti's range of offerings is limited.

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Geography: Although it has operations in more than 70 cities in more than 20 country markets, Protiviti is relatively small in terms of geographic reach (even so, clients said they have not felt the impact of Protiviti's gaps in geographic reach). Protiviti has so far managed to ramp up teams of consultants fairly quickly and has found low-cost ways of flying consultants into country markets without going over budget. In the long run, however, Protiviti cannot continue with this business and delivery model as it grows. While Protiviti agrees that it must continue to build a presence in the markets it serves, the company believes that it has presence in most markets it needs to be in to support clients.

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PricewaterhouseCoopers Like its accounting and finance peers, PwC offers a full suite of finance advisory services. Structurally, its global practices are operated as a network of membership firms, but operationally, these networked firms work together closely to deliver a seamless global client experience. PwC has been aggressively closing gaps in its capabilities, including in analytics and technology areas, with acquisitions around the world. PwC works closely with alliance partners, such as SAP, Oracle and HP, to help strengthen its end-to-end technology implementation service offerings or when they require PwC's expertise. PwC has its own set of tools, methodologies and frameworks. The company services both global and midmarket clients and has targeted midmarket offerings in some country markets. Its practice globally has grown in size organically and inorganically, and the company has grown a significant practice in the Middle East. PwC leverages its global delivery centers around the world. Strengths ■

Market Understanding: PwC enjoys a reputation as an advisor to regulators and public sectors. Its portfolio of finance offerings and its finance vision are complete. PwC's advantage of scale in terms of the number of finance domain experts enables it to encapsulate the emerging areas of risk and sustainability issues around the finance function. Its clients recognize PwC as an expert in its field. PwC continues to acquire firms to strengthen its capabilities, such as PRTM, Diamond and, most recently, ISH, which specializes in solutions for clinical systems and services.

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Innovation: PwC continues to drive investment in innovation through acquisitions of analytic solutions for its clients. Its clients cited examples of good enterprise performance management systems and solutions and good decision support systems.

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Market Responsiveness and Track Record: Clients gave PwC high ratings in the area of being flexible and responsive to changes. Gartner has also seen that PwC is quick to respond to market changes by growing aggressively via acquisitions and adjusting its strategy where it makes sense to address unexplored opportunities in services. PwC is forward-thinking and has demonstrated to Gartner that it continues to build on its strategy.

Cautions ■

Customer Experience: As PwC continues to ramp up and grow its pool of consultants across the globe, it will need to pay particular attention to ensuring it is training teams to have deep consulting competencies (as defined, a combination of personal style/personal chemistry, problem diagnosis skills, responsiveness, true advisory skills, professionalism, and long-term relationship orientation that separates a professional management consultant from someone who does consulting only sometimes), especially among its mid- and junior-level consultants. It is not an easy task for any firm growing rapidly, as we've described in the Market Overview section of this report, but clients are especially appreciative of the intimacy and team effort approach.

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Operations: With a desire to increase resources in a project, PwC needs to fine-tune its internal team in terms of collaboration with the client's organization. Its client ratings on collaboration and project management skills are lower than those of some other consultants.

Recommended Reading Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription. "Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes: How Gartner Evaluates Vendors Within a Market" "MarketScope for Global Finance Management Consulting Services" "Q&A: The Top-Five International Lessons to Be Learned About IFRS and Finance Transformation Adoption by Japanese Businesses" "Competitive Landscape: Finance Management Consulting Service Providers, Worldwide, 2010-2011" "Dataquest Insight: How Finance Performance Management Providers Should Position Their Value in 2009 and 2010" "Dataquest Insight: Where the Finance Function Will Be Investing in the Next Two Years" "Dataquest Insight: Who Will Be the Preferred Providers for Financial Management Services in 2010?" "Market Insight: Five Reasons Service Providers Lose in Finance Management Consulting Bids" "Market Definition: Outlining the Market for Consulting and System Integration Services in Finance Management and Operations" "MarketScope for Global Enterprise Governance, Risk Management and Compliance Consulting Services" "Competitive Landscape: Enterprise Governance, Risk Management, Compliance Consulting Global, 2011" Evidence The client reference Web survey was conducted between 13 June and 8 July 2011, with 107 total completed interviews. The 15 evaluation criteria were analyzed across all the vendors evaluated; highlights of these evaluation criteria are provided in this research.

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Vendors Added or Dropped We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants and MarketScopes as markets change. As a result of these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant or MarketScope may change over time. A vendor appearing in a Magic Quadrant or MarketScope one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we have changed our opinion of that vendor. This may be a reflection of a change in the market and, therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or a change of focus by a vendor.

Evaluation Criteria Definitions Ability to Execute Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor that compete in/ serve the defined market. This includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/ partnerships as defined in the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria. Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization): Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that the individual business unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering the product and will advance the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products. Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel. Market Responsiveness and Track Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of responsiveness. Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This mind share can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional initiatives, thought leadership, wordof-mouth and sales activities. Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customers receive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-level agreements and so on.

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Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis. Completeness of Vision Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs and to translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen and understand buyers' wants and needs, and they can shape or enhance those with their added vision. Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements. Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service, and communications affiliates that extend the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base. Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as they map to current and future requirements. Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business proposition. Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical markets. Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes. Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that geography and market.

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