Providing services to business units leverages expertise and protects resources.
Treasury and internal audit are increasingly offering business units in-house services as a way to squeeze more value out of their operations. Some of these are special projects, such as data mining, strategy guidance or process optimization. Others are ongoing services, such as the in-house credit analysis of contractors or subcontractors, similar to what third parties like Dun & Bradstreet generate. But in general, the goal is the same: to leverage existing expertise and protect resources.
This can be a useful way to justify keeping staff, since treasury can charge the business units for the services, balancing the cost. The key is to ascertain whether the organization has the expertise to match the service of third-party providers at a competitive cost.
In some cases, treasury or internal audit will provide services free of charge to business units, as a way to create goodwill when there is some slack in the department’s core workflow. Some members of The NeuGroup’s Internal Auditors’ Peer Group operate this way, but do charge the business units for special projects that require the reallocation of resources. In any case, having internal expertise can make a company less dependent on the pricing whims of third parties, and the more intimate knowledge of the company’s business may result in a better product.