Enhancing Sales: Work with Sales to Drive Result

Sales and Accounting are not alike. In many organizations the two functions are at odds with each other, causing wasteful infighting. Many times, sales will undercut the accountants and vice versa. Sometimes this is inadvertent and sometimes not. Both functions should work together to achieve superior financial performance. We must take the lead and develop a better relationship with the sales function and the sales team. Oftentimes the sales incentive plans cause friction and result in counterproductive behaviors. If Accounting and Sales were to work together effectively, then net income, revenue and sales incentives would all increase. Thinking differently about how to work together will dramatically enhance financial performance. Imagine at least a five percent increase in the bottom line? We will discuss how. Working together yields superior results.

Topics Discussed:

• Understanding the sales function and sales team 
  • Differing backgrounds, expectations, and motivations
• Developing strong relationships 
  • Credibility and trust
• How to ascertain what Sales really needs
• Effective incentive plans that are understood by the sales team
• Becoming the key support people for sales
• Communicating value and profitability 
  • Explaining risk

Learning Objectives: Understand how to work more effectively with the sales function. Understand the large impact that accounting has on sales. Understand how to enable sales to enhance financial results in your organization.

Growth Opportunities for CFOs: Value Added CFOs

Many CFOs place too much emphasis on external financial and statutory compliance reporting for government regulatory agencies and not enough on corporate performance management (CPM) methods including internal management accounting. The former is for valuation (e.g., inventories and COGS). The latter is for “creating wealth value” to support better decisions. This course provides tools and information for how CFOs can transition from bean counters to bean growers. The best CFOs not only keep score, which is necessary, but they enable the organization to score more, which is much more valuable.

Topics Discussed:

• Best practices for product, service line, channel, and customer profitability (using activity-based costing [ABC])
• Strategy management using strategy maps, balanced scorecards, and dashboards.
• Process improvement using lean management with lean accounting
• Process improvement using quality management and cost of quality
• Capacity-sensitive driver-based budgeting and rolling financial forecasts
• Enterprise risk management (ERM); and
• Data science and analytics

Objectives:

1. How to view enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) as the seamless integration of managerial methods rather than as a process.

2. Understand how business analytics is an advance over business intelligence and where Big Data fits in?

3. How to identify and differentiate strategic KPIs in a balanced scorecard and operational performance indicators (OPIs) in dashboards.

4. How to properly calculate product, service-line, channel, and customer profitability for analysis, insights, and actions.

5. How to perform “predictive accounting” for capacity-sensitive driver-based budgets / rolling financial forecasts, what-if analysis, and outsourcing decisions?

6. How to overcome implementation barriers such as behavioral resistance to change and fear of being held accountable?

Ready to be an Effective CFO? Skills to Succeed

With all the buzz about the additional responsibilities of CFOs today, what are the essential skillsets for success? How do you excel when you are spread so thin? Becoming the multi-skilled CFO companies are looking for requires you to balance traditional responsibilities with new demands. How do you utilize your key relationships and your team to fill the gaps and make sure nothing slips through? To be effective requires a shift in the way financial leaders think and approach their day - rather than a never-ending chase after new skillsets. Thinking differently about how to accomplish the broad spectrum of CFO responsibilities is a key lesson in your essential lifelong learning. We will review many tactics to help you become even more effective.

Topics Discussed:

• Utilizing your team – your whole team 
  • Your company, your experts – your resources
• Maintaining relationships with key external parties that can be your secret weapon 
  • Building key connections– who, how, and when?
• Making critical decisions timely 
  • Translating data analytics into what matters 
  • Knowing when to delegate
• Gaining knowledge efficiently 
  • Deciphering what to learn 
  • Determining the questions to ask
• Becoming the Chief Value Officer 
  • Communicating what drives value 
  • Understanding risk

Objectives: Understand how to look at the requirements of the modern-day CFO differently and how to be an effective leader in your organization.

Measuring and Reporting - ESG and Sustainability

ESG broadly covers many of the non-financial issues every organization faces. The use of ESG as a term however conjures images to many of tree-huggers protecting rare species at the expense of jobs and growth, requirements that well-qualified candidates are not hired or passed over for promotion because they do not meet “diversity standards” and that companies are constrained by restrictive laws and regulations from conducting their business.

ESG is not about limiting growth or profitability. It is about measuring non-financial information and using that information to make companies more efficient and more profitable. ESG is not a fad that will go away but a method of viewing our organizations so that they can be better and more profitable.

Topics Discussed:

• Defining sustainability
• Environmental risks and opportunities: How your organization deals with natural resources
• Social risks and opportunities: How your organization deals with people
• Governance risks and Opportunities: How your organization deals with laws, regulations, and controls
• Defining and measuring environmental, social and governance metrics (ESG)
• Reporting on ESG metrics and your organization’s efforts

Objectives: To better understand how identifying and defining environmental, social, and governmental efforts within an organization and measuring and reporting on those efforts will make their organizations more efficient and profitable.