A case history from earlier in my career when I was CFO of a pharmaceutical firm.

I had come in one year after an acquisition where plants and product lines had been acquired, but the finance and IT infrastructure had to be set up from scratch. Things were not going well and the company was fighting for survival. Finance had played a role, but quickly we changed the whole culture in how finance operated.

• The computer system was a nice financially oriented package, but did not meet the needs of the rest of the company. We shifted the focused and asked people in sales and operations what they needed from the system. We looked at how they wanted to be able to process orders or batches, rather than having the system tell them how they had to operate. We eventually made it much more user friendly, bringing in some add-on packages that fit the pharmaceutical business. Finally people felt they were listened to.
• Purchasing was almost ground to a halt with suppliers cutting the company off. Bills were paid late and vendors could not get a straight answer, if any at all, on when they could get paid. Promises were not kept. Rather than avoid the vendors, we called each key one up and got an understanding of their situation. Then in return for resuming shipping, we worked out a payment plan over time that paid the old bills off at 100%. Rather than being a company to avoid, within a couple years, we became a preferred customer of the chemical firms, often getting the first shot at new ingredients. Instead of hindering purchasing, finance make it easier for purchasing to do their work.
• Customers were starting to shy away from doing business with the firm, expecting that our firm would not last for very long. Plus, we did not have a good track record of fulfilling orders, which was a killer in this business, since the next competitor with the same product was only a phone call away. When calling the customers on collection calls (which had been piling up as customers were sitting on bills), we took the opportunity to ask them how we could help and let them know about the positive changes taking place. In other words, we were here to stay.
• Management was not getting served well by finance because the cost accounting system was very weak. Pricing of product became more of a guessing game. Turn the clock forward two years and the picture was different. We had developed a strong system with a better method of allocating costs to fit the business. Management had a high confidence in the program and used it to properly price products and improve margins.
• Investors and the banks were left out in the cold too. Reports were very late and key information like cash flow was left out. In addition, over-optimistic accounting led to faulty allocations and overstated results. We gave them the corrected picture, but also put a game plan together convincing them to more than double down their investments. We also went from being weeks late on the financials to producing flash month end numbers the first morning after month end.

Bottom line, the rest of the company and outsiders were pretty unhappy with the service finance was giving. We turned it around into a positive. Thanks to great investors and banks and a new CEO, the turnaround moves we started gained momentum and we went from losing $9 million on $8 million in sales the year before we came in to earning $28 million after tax on sales of $52 million from the manufacturing operations just four years later.

We didn't stop there. We made it a habit to get together with heads of the different departments, as well as outsiders, to keep learning new ways that finance could be of service. As technology developed, we invested in new things like a local area network, which opened up new ways for various departments to operate more effectively.

If the finance department doesn't see itself as a service arm to the rest of the company, it could be time for a change in attitude. And a change in service.