The role of the finance function in recent years has been one of the great success stories in the corporate world. Go back a decade and the finance function within a company was there almost solely to provide certainty, stability and security in financial reporting. Now, particularly in the largest companies, the finance function tends to have moved into more strategic areas. But as the finance function has pushed the limits on its influence in large companies, two issues have become apparent.

First, this is a phenomenon largely confined to the top end of the market, and second, the successful transformation of the finance function tends to produce high performance.