Automation World: Practical Advice to Increase Manufacturing Profitability

“With small and mid-size manufacturers, there is a tremendous need for accountants to move beyond financial reporting and budgeting for control to help every area of the business understand and improve the monetary impact of operations on profitability—whether it is in manufacturing, warehousing, marketing/sales, or personnel. The function most often missing from the accounting repertoire is creating information for internal decision support. Why? First, because it is barely taught in accounting curricula; and second, because most accountants start out in auditing and auditors don’t care about internal decision support, only external financial reporting.”

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Industry Week: What Makes a High-Performance Organization?

“The process for developing a high-performance organization requires measurement. If you value something, then it should be measured. If you think that measurement is unnecessary, then you do not place much value on the activity.”

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Robert Kugel on LinkedIn: Fundamental Change is Coming to ERP Systems

By the end of the 2020s, ERP systems will have a different look and fulfill a broader role in organizations. CFOs and controllers must have an ongoing process to evaluate how technology can improve both the department’s efficiency and its ability to deliver more timely, useful analysis and advice to the rest of the organization. To be successful, these executives will need to be less hesitant in adopting new technology and the new techniques that become possible. They also need to manage a department that can—and is willing—to adapt to more rapid change than in the past.

Read more on LinkedIn >

FP&A Trends: 3 Ways to Organise FP&A Teams: The Pros and Cons

In general, there are three typical ways FP&A teams are organized – by function, by line of business, or by geography. What’s the best option for your team?

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AllBusiness: Looking to the Future: 5 Steps to Better Financial Projections During Covid-19

“Almost overnight, a global pandemic turned the status quo on its head, and individuals and businesses were left scrambling to adapt and overcome the challenges they faced. Click on https://ncplanning.com/business-corporate-planning/ to access important information regarding business laws.

For some businesses, that was a loss in foot traffic or a change in consumer behavior. For others, it was a problem downstream in their supply chain, distribution network, or development pipeline, which reverberated back.”

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RCA Institute: How Do You Prefer Your Costs – Fixed or Variable?

The RCA Institute asks the following questions about fixed or variable costs – Are they avoidable for the current decision? And, what’s my market risk and tolerance?

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SF Magazine: Preparing the Finance Function for Technological Change

“With so many technologies emerging and evolving rapidly, choosing where to begin can be a challenge. An important initial step should be developing a strategy to effectively use the leading-edge technology and analytics techniques required to become a data-driven organization. Development of this strategy starts with considering finance’s business goals.”

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Cost Management: The Key to Sustainable Profitability

“Companies that achieve “efficient growth” focus on building scale, not scope, into their cost structures.”

Controlling costs is not a new priority for modern CFOs, but today’s competitive pressures have finance leaders determined to translate their long-term growth plans to sustainable profitability. Finance leaders today distinguish themselves by the cost management practices they implement in their organization, because those decisions can have a tangible impact on shareholder returns and build the foundation for profitable growth.  However, most CFOs are struggling to create the conditions for efficient growth due to widespread missteps in their cost management practices. Companies that successfully grow their top line while reducing costs focus on building and reinforcing the necessary scale in the cost structure to secure long-term profitable growth.

Read More at Smarter with Gartner >

How Much is Your Business Complexity Costing You?

Without the right tools in place, business complexity is not only costly, it’s also a major hindrance to developing functional agility. The ability to respond quickly to changing market and internal conditions is critical for success in today’s ever-changing business climate. Recent research from The Hackett Group reported that organizational and process complexity are the second and third biggest inhibitors of becoming an agile finance function. Complexity is combination of different factors, all of them related and often specific to an industry or company. However, finance in any industry can reap substantial benefits from reducing the complexity of its operating environment.

Read More at The Hackett Group >