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Simplicient Controlling – advanced financial management

Simplicient Controlling 9 – Financial vs. Operational KPIs – A Case for Merging Them

A new doitinvest.com blog focusing on whether we should mix financial and non-financial KPIs.

This Simplicient Controlling blog  will focus on the merger of the financial and operational KPI performance measurement. More exactly, on the pro’s and con’s of mixing the financial and non-financial indicators. In most companies’ practice, the various KPIs are often disconnected: whilst the Profit and Loss KPIs are firmly grounded in the financial department, the operational KPIs are often left in another silo – the Operations Management department, who anecdotically knows better and has the competences to develop them.

Separating operational KPIs (from the finance ones) is barely a good idea. It comes most likely from the realm of scientific management, from the times when Alfred Sloan professionalised General Motor’s management – in order to cope with its’ fast scaling up. Yet, six decades later the division is heavily entrenched in the corporate methods.Read More »Simplicient Controlling 9 – Financial vs. Operational KPIs – A Case for Merging Them

Simplicient Controlling 8 – Number-Cruncher or Sparring Partner?

Controllers are number crunchers – aren‘t they? A controller is the person who comes to you with a long table, filled with numbers, and uses a red pen to highlight differences.

Unfortunately, not anymore. Business or sparring partner (a term used often in recruiting finance managers) means more than that. To be brutally honest, C-level managers rarely care how much time spent a controller crunching the data and coming up with a deviation analysis. But the C-level bosses will very quickly (matter of minutes) point to a graph bar and mention that there is a problem… Well, I guess in most cases the controller did not spot the issue and needs to follow up. And this re-iteration process goes on and on… tiring up the financial wizards.Read More »Simplicient Controlling 8 – Number-Cruncher or Sparring Partner?

Simplicient Controlling 7 – The CFO Profile to Fall in Love With

Back in September 2014, doitinvest.com published a researched white paper on the perfect profile of a Chief Financial Officer (in Central & Eastern Europe). It was quite well received, so I decided to revisit the topic today in this blog post, with more general notes.

After browsing several articles (see bottom for sources) on the CFO job profiles, I found quite interesting conclusions, even if you are not a boring finance professional trying to make his/her way to the top. Whilst reading them, I had two major surprises:
– The articles on the topic were few and far in between, and quite old (we are in 2014, they were from 2007-2010, when probably the enthusiasm and the PR needed to recruit high-caliber professionals for CFO jobs were substantially higher);
– Surprise surprise – despite their aging, the CFO blogs had some interesting insights which are still valid so far.

What were the key findings of these headhunter blogs related to the ideal CFO?:
– CFO’s need to have superior technical finance knowledge, especially related to the complexity of accounting standards, fiscal requirements, M&A’s and financial analysis (the Western Europe CFO’s who deal with much fewer and more developed countries need paradoxically less of such technical skills);
– Communication skills are highly valued for the senior financial leaders, especially in the emerging markets & fast changing sectors such as industry, tech, pharma, IT;Read More »Simplicient Controlling 7 – The CFO Profile to Fall in Love With