Verizon is focused on keeping people, businesses, and things connected with each other, and the company’s chief financial officer (CFO) knew he needed to get his dispersed team focused on serving the business better. The group he led would play an important role in shaping the company’s future, so he set a goal of building a world-class organization that could deliver both strategic decisions to maximize shareholder value and efficient, effective, and customer-centric global services. And he wanted to do it all while developing future leadership that could readily navigate an ever changing telecommunications landscape.

The task was ambitious and the challenges were daunting. After years of mergers and acquisitions, the finance group’s thousands of employees were decentralized, worked out of several hundred locations, and used outdated legacy IT systems. But that wasn’t all: Challenges also included duplicate functions, conflicting sources of data, high operating costs, and an inability to adapt to the rapidly changing needs of the business. A study showed the organization was three to five years behind its corporate peers in the areas of people, processes, and technology.

Encouraging work was already under way. Some of the group’s functions were considered best-in-class. System updates and consolidations had begun, and key people were being trained in advanced analytical techniques.

But the road ahead was long. The CFO didn’t want merely to catch his corporate peers. He wanted to leapfrog them. To do that, the finance organization needed to consolidate into one efficient, integrated unit that could provide timely, accurate, meaningful information and insights to the business.