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Business Partnering Sounds Good. In Many Companies It Is Less Than One Person
Mid-sized companies are the backbone of the German economy. And they have controlling teams of three or four people, sometimes fewer.
They do everything that a large corporation spreads across several positions. And they do it very well. The standard controlling processes, often reaching well beyond the financial and deep into the functions. Plus the call from the management team on a Friday evening.
The WHU Controller Panel measured this in 2025: small companies explicitly define an average of 2.8 controller roles, large companies 4.9.
The expectation to actively support decisions is the same either way.
The business partner concept comes from a world that often does not exist in smaller companies.