Financial performance management covers a wide range of practices and processes. We work with clients on this array to address business issues under the financial performance management umbrella.

CHALLENGES

• Limited visibility and understanding of future cash flows, leading to unplanned cash shortages and difficulties purchasing inventory needed to fulfill customer demand;
• Limited understanding of key profit drivers, including major expenditures, staffing requirements, and profitability by customer, product, project, or team;
• Limited visibility to customer concentration risk for both sales and profitability;
• Having a finance team serving as scorekeepers who function in react mode, lacking the skills needed to add value as business partners;
• Complex and inefficient budget processes, outdated by the time they are finished, and can’t be updated during the year;
• The budget is disconnected from the company strategy;
• Lack of a credible financial plan covering the next 1-3 years that can be used with lenders and/or investors;
• Management reporting is backward- looking and inadequate as an early warning system;
• No process for evaluating the ROI on significant proposed expenditures;
• Lack of standardized data sources and definitions leading to debates about who has the “right” numbers;
• Excel-based planning process with limited collaboration functionality and unscalable; and
• Incentive compensation plans not aligned with the company’s financial goals.

SOLUTIONS

• Developed 13-week rolling cash forecast with weekly updates providing increased visibility and lead-time to adjust for changes in future cash flows
• Created monthly reporting packages demonstrating profitability by customer or product
• Improved the efficiency of the annual budget process, reducing the time needed to complete the process, improving the relevance of the plan, and enabling business leaders to spend more time focusing on operating issues
• Developed quarterly 4 quarter rolling-forecast process to update prior assumptions to reflect current market conditions and opportunities and reprioritization of resources
• Defined optimal financial metrics to monitor company performance and developed accompanying reporting process providing timely and actionable intelligence
• Upgraded finance staff to provide proactive focus on business performance and closer integration with business unit leaders

WAYS WE CAN HELP YOU

Here are key solutions we deliver in our Financial Performance Management practice.

Assessment of Plan to Perform Cycle

We evaluate your current system, including:

• Service Delivery Model – Evaluate centralization, alignment between Finance & business units and between planning activities and strategic objectives;
• People – Evaluate FP&A resources, skill levels, ability to provide forward-looking decision support, business partnering mindset;
• Process – Review budgeting/planning/forecasting processes (purpose, participants, standardization, automation, etc.) ;
• Technology – Review existing tools and evaluate need/benefit to move to cloud-based planning tools;
• Reporting – Evaluate current reporting capabilities relative to KPI identification, tracking performance against KPIs, and providing action-oriented targeted insight; and
• Governance – Review use of standard definitions and data sources in planning, reporting and analysis.

Management Reporting

We review and refresh your reporting system, including:

• Develop reporting packages/dashboards providing actionual intelligence;
• Prepare monthly/quarterly performance reports (actual vs. PY & plan) and accompanying management narrative; and
• Develop a financial narrative that can be used with lenders or investors.

Financial Modeling & Analysis

We consider improvements for modeling and analysis, such as:

• Develop budgeting/forecasting models that align with client’s business model;
• Develop a financial model to evaluate ROI on new investments;
• Develop proforma financials; and
• Capital structure and cost of capital analysis.

An initial assessment of your financial performance management can save your company time and money. It can also improve your overall effectiveness. We help companies of all sizes to make this significant difference.