You are invited to join members of the Executive Connection for our next speaker session, led by speaker Andrew Walker on “Opening the Financial Black Box”

Opening the Financial Black Box

TEC groups in 2022 are focused on “Execution”. For a business leader to ensure excellent execution the key roles of the team need to be crystal clear. Financial performance is driven by the whole team but the “Finance Function” is often a black box, where outcomes and roles are not clearly defined. What exactly does a CFO do? Do you actually need one? What’s the role of your accountants? Andrew Walker is an experienced CFO who has advised many medium sized businesses on their financial performance and through that has seen the range of capabilities of a finance team.

This workshop explores what you need and how that need can be fulfilled; to explore the people, processes, proficiency, and importantly outputs of the financial department.

Key Learnings

The workshop will provide an insight into what does an excellent financial function deliver to a business to;

• support profitable growth,

• anticipate problems,

• manage cash flow, and

• increase shareholders wealth and

• Free up the CEO’s time to focus on the priorities of the business

Workshop content

Identify Gaps

Attendees will be asked to come prepared with a snapshot of their finance function. From this members will discuss the Gaps between Current state and Future state (what the CEO ideally wants)

Reasons for the Gap

• The Peter principle, job functions and the growth of the business and the financial function.

• The Good, The Bad & The Ugly – Financial terms, The Capable, The Incapable & The Incompetent

 The Future State

• How is the cash flow managed daily / weekly / monthly? AND the forecasted cash flow.

• What should be included in a management report? AND the forecast methodology.

• How is the budget setup?

• What are daily / weekly / monthly reports?

• What is a variance analysis?

• Strategic input? What if scenarios AND building the 12-month rolling forecast.

What extra does an excellent financial team deliver?

• Understand and continually improve the processes of financial reporting

• Process to produce timely accurate and relevant monthly reports

• Management of the financial and interface to the ERP systems

• Ability to deliver accurate “what if” sensitivity analysis

• Identifying key risks and latest regulations

OUR SPEAKER, Andrew Walker

Andrew is a Business Improvement Specialist, who just happens to be a very experienced financial manager and qualified accountant. He is CEO of Improcus, A Brisbane based business improvement specialist consultancy.

Andrew says:

What I have experienced over the last 14 years regardless of whether a business was going through expectational growth or tumbling into a distressed state, owners, directors, and managers of the business are reticent to challenge the finance departments. This has created what I call the Black Box syndrome. This workshop is to demonstrate to CEO’s what they should expect from a financial department.

Andrew is qualified with KPMG as a chartered accountant and was CFO for BTR Dunlop Ltd in South Africa and Financial Controller for Dunlop Africa responsible for SAR1.0b turnover. He moved to London as CEO of AAF Industries PLC, a manufacturing, rental, and construction business, and during his tenure, the share price increased threefold. He then joined forces with different partners in three smaller businesses before relocating to Australia 14 years ago.

His Australian experience has been on improving profit through focus with SME’s.

During the last 10 years he has worked with over 100 companies with an annual aggregate turnover of more than $1.0b including working successfully with several members of the Executive Connection

TEC members are high-integrity business leaders from a diverse range of industries who meet monthly to support each other and address the challenges of leading in these increasingly uncertain times.

The speaker session is the first part of a monthly all-day meeting and is attended by between 14 and 16 people. During the afternoon, the TEC members continue with their Executive Session. Our speakers are subject experts focused on stimulating active discussion with the group.

Attendance at TEC meetings is for business leaders only and by invitation and subject to space availability , please click here and register your interest.