On top of all the other cost of finance...

At CFO: Metric of the Month: Total Cost of the Finance Function (May 11, 2015) by Mary C. Driscoll:

... CFOs are still expected to do more with less, however. In other words, automate on the cheap, move more work into shared services centers, cut headcount wherever possible, and drive down the cost of financial operations.

Yet gauged in terms of Total Cost of the Finance Function as a Percentage of Revenue, the first APQC Metric of the Month (an ongoing CFO feature),  many organizations are, sadly, still wasting hundreds of thousands or even millions of revenue dollars on inefficient finance operations (Figure 1).

This data reflects the relative cost profiles of 543 organizations that completed an APQC benchmarking assessment for the finance organization as a whole. Total cost includes personnel, systems, overhead, and any other costs necessary for day-to-day operation of the finance organization. The data shown in Figure 1 are calculated as follows: total finance cost divided by total business entity revenue, which is then (for display purposes) multiplied by 100.

I'm thinking these financial cost figures apply to nonfinancial businesses. So, at the median, the cost of overhead attributable to financial operations comes to 1.2% of revenue. These are internal costs, as opposed to the external cost of interest on a bank loan, for example. Hey, you have to have finance people in the company, to deal with the finance people you're doing business with.

So if I were to figure the total cost of finance, I'd start with the financial sector, add to it the financial dealings of the nonfinancial business sector, and then on top of all that cost add this 1.2% of nonfinancial business sector revenue, to cover the cost of the finance organizations within the nonfinancial businesses.

I don't think I'm double-counting anything.