Study

We are all familiar with the phrase from the soccer world, “after the game is before the game“. With this in mind, we are looking at the final study report below because the motto here is also “after the financial closing is before the financial closing”!

It is undeniable that financial closing itself is not new. Starting with what is known as a “fast close”, companies have been working with the closing process in a structured manner for more than 30 years. As a result, there were further evolution levels and a current best practice standard was devised. Against this background, we will examine the following thesis in this study report:

Closing has a high degree of maturity in many companies. However, it is yet to experience the greatest change and further development as part of digitization – towards Closing 4.0.

Accordingly, the following pages are meant to determine the current maturity of the closing process of the companies surveyed, while the study also seeks to assess the extent to which the route to Closing 4.0 has already begun. The latter case raises the question as to what measures and best practices are most efficient and effective in supporting the path to Closing 4.0.

In this study, 55 people from as many companies were interviewed on their closing process and the following issues inves-tigated further:

• Challenges in the closing process: This is divided into accounting, technology, organization, and processes
• Effectiveness of best practice solutions: This was done by identifying the influence of 29 common best practice solutions, which were also divided into the three previous categories