Perspectives from the field.

Exec-level support is the number one determinant of strategy implementation success

C-teams focused on strategy implementation: the support you give your senior program leaders will decide long-term project success more than any other factor.

1. 01Giving them a clear mandate to solve the problem, and communicating that mandate to the organisation
2. 02Unblocking their path
3. 03Not bogging them down with a one-size-fits-all bureaucratic IT approval process for every small capability or feature they need to build
4. 04Making sure they have the right resources allocated — the right cross-functional team members and the right funding
5. 05Using your SteerCo to guide, review progress, and make the major decisions

Get this right, and you set your organisation up for success.

The Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard: turning sustainability into a competitive advantage for SMEs

On 3 July the European Commission adopted the VSME as part of the EU Omnibus simplification package — a practical, proportionate way for SMEs to answer customers, banks and investors without full CSRD complexity.

1. 01Keep it simple. The Basic Module contains just 11 reporting disclosures. Unlike CSRD, the VSME requires no double materiality assessment and only asks for information where it applies to your business.
2. 02Meet growing stakeholder expectations. Respond to banks, investors and larger customers with one recognised framework instead of completing multiple questionnaires.
3. 03Win more business. Structured ESG information strengthens your position in tenders and supplier selection.
4. 04Build a solid ESG foundation. Organise sustainability information, identify opportunities and risks, and prepare for future customer and regulatory expectations.

At Arctic Edge Consultants we help SMEs implement the VSME in a pragmatic, business-focused way — from identifying the right ESG information to preparing a concise, credible report.

Two focus areas to strengthen board and investor confidence in your projections

Aligning operational planning across functions and tying those plans to financial forecasts helped an engineering firm secure its next round of growth funding.

1. 01Strengthen execution management
2. 02Provide a clearer view of working capital needs
3. 03Enable the exec team to increase board and investor confidence, and secure the next round of growth funding

One finance cube. One version of truth. No exceptions.

Treat your semantic layer as the single version of truth for every measure, dimension and KPI — and you eliminate redundancy while cutting BI maintenance cost.

1. 01Embed the cube into Accounting's and FP&A's ways of working. A cube at the centre of month-end close, quarterly reporting, rolling forecasts and management reporting is constantly validated and continuously improved.
2. 02Govern the cube rigorously. Retire legacy cubes and eliminate multiple versions. Redundant analytical layers are an unnecessary cost to Finance and IT, and a risk to reporting quality.
3. 03Build in continuous data quality checks across the full chain — ERP to data warehouse to cube. Define clear roles and responsibilities, set error alerts, and document the process visually.

Done well, this creates a high-quality, finance-owned data set that eliminates redundancy and reduces BI maintenance costs.

FP&A teams are likely not maximising their automation potential

Dig into ERP setup, data flow and every manual intervention with IT and Accounting — then aim for a hands-off reporting environment and spend the time saved on better forecasting and analytics.

The outcome: a highly automated reporting environment, and your time moving to more complex opportunities — better forecasting, better analytics.

Your BI or ERP implementation is a Finance transformation opportunity. Don't waste it.

A purely IT- or vendor-led implementation usually leaves a BI stack Finance never fully exploits. Co-develop the BI strategy instead.

1. 01Push automation to its limits — know what your data layers can do and fully exploit them, with built-in checks
2. 02Govern your master data — map your critical hierarchies and keys, ensuring one version of the truth, not multiple competing dimensions
3. 03Clarify your roles — define how FP&A, Accounting and IT roles need to evolve to own and sustain the new environment efficiently

Reporting and analytics are most successful when approached holistically — built around the needs of Finance and the broader organisation, not done piecemeal.

Poor operational and financial planning creates funding risk

Integrating planning across sales, procurement, operations and finance improved execution at a fast-growing Icelandic industrial firm — and unlocked long-term funding.

1. 01Cross-functional communication and planning improved materially — from daily standups on the shop floor to new sales contracting processes
2. 02Procurement, manufacturing and installation execution improved
3. 03Investor confidence in the financial plans increased, unlocking funding

Financial planning quality is a direct result of operational capability: procurement schedules, manufacturing master plans, delivery execution and organisational routines.