IMPROVED ENGAGEMENT BY FINANCE TEAM

A manufacturing company received its management accounts every month after about four weeks, by which time they were not very useful.  All the Finance resource was used to produce accounts, and not much else.

The Managing Director thought that more should be possible, and asked us to come in and support the Financial Controller.  We streamlined the processes involved in accounts production, reducing reporting time to around one week, and introduced new management accounts that compared results with budget and forecast information.  New processes were introduced for supplier and customer payments, along with other minor process changes.  The FC is now undertaking some operational tasks in the time that has been liberated.  We facilitated a change to a new firm of auditors and changed the R&D tax consultants, both of which provided cost reductions.

Strategically the Managing Director wanted assistance with a number of issues.  We worked on a cashflow plan around the purchase of some high-value “last time buy” stock, and outsourced some non-core manufacturing activities to a new supplier-partner.   We worked with the operations team using simulation techniques to show that we could build proforma orders after receipt of cash and ship them within a week, rather than holding finished goods stock waiting for slow payments.   We also worked on some delicate shareholder issues. We designed a new model for US distribution and worked with US lawyers and accountants to set up a new subsidiary.

We are now providing a long-term interim FD resource to oversee the finance processes and report to the Board, and continue to work with the MD on other strategic projects.