About

“This course offers excellent and innovative insights into the future horizon of a finance professional” - Arun Nair, Finance and Quality Manager, Vector 

Lean Finance and Finance Transformation is a training course for the next generation of finance professionals who want to be a part of an organisational team that adds value to the organisation. The training workshop essentially comprises four main segments with interactive discussion and activities designed to maximise learning.

• Understand what it means to be lean and world class
• Improve the performance of the finance function
• Applying leading edge management accounting tools and techniques
• Transform the finance function

Why should you attend?

• Re-design finance team structures to deliver value
• Transform the mindset of finance professionals and empower them to deliver value
• Learn Beyond Budgeting, Activity Based Costing, and budgeting & rolling forecast techniques
• Understand corporate performance management and analysis
• Integrate financial and other systems to improve organisational reporting

International presenter

Grasp this opportunity to meet with the world class presenter who will challenge your thinking and change your views and mind-set. He will bring his vast global experience to the training course. Come with an open mind and go back to change your finance role!

Outline

Understanding what is world class finance

What is world class finance?

Leading organizations expect their finance teams to become world class, however, there is little understanding of what is meant by such status. This session will look in detail at what criteria are required to become world class including benefits to be gained from achieving that status. It will set the scene for the rest of the course.

• What is world class finance?
• Characteristics of world class finance
• Examining a case study

Lean and mean finance function

If the finance function is to move from being merely a fat and lazy audit and compliance function within an organization to a value adding unit, it must look at other innovative developments such as lean manufacturing. It must become lean by becoming cost effective. It must become mean by influencing organizational performance to contribute to the bottom line. This session will consider all the downsides of the current status of finance and identify how it must improve. 

• Finance efficiency & effectiveness
• Attributes of world class organisations
• Metrics to demonstrate world class
• Six sigma in finance
• New finance structures

Improving performance of the finance function

World best practices in delivering finance processes

Finance has been at the forefront of demanding organizational costs to be reduced. Yet how has it performed itself in improving its own processes and reducing its own costs? This session will look at the global best practices in the performance of finance processes. It will provide benchmarks in finance processes as well as insights as to how you can improve your own processes. 

• Examining best practices in finance processes
• Reduction of finance costs over the years
• KPI’s for improving finance performance

Benefits of finance shared services and finance and accounting Outsourcing (FAO)

Finance shared services and finance and accounting outsourcing (FAO) have already had a major impact on finance business partnering. They have allowed for significant reduction in the cost of the finance function. This session will consider the future of these innovative developments in finance and consider how process specialization has improved processes and costs. 

• The benefits of shared services.
• Building an effective shared services function.
• Emerging best practices in shared services.
• Outsourcing of F&A

Leading edge management accounting tools and technologies

Core capabilities of world class finance

For finance to play a new, value adding role, transformation must achieve reforms at two levels – service delivery and closer integration with strategic and operational management. This session will build upon the aspects of the previous sessions and explore some primary capabilities that finance must develop in order to become a strategic business partner including development of finance talent. 

• Management accounting – an aid to finance improvement.
• Finance’s value adding strategic role
• A model for effective finance delivery.

Leading edge financial management tools and techniques

Any organizational function does not improve without the support of tools, techniques and processes that must be developed. These are very important contributors to developing a world class finance function. This session will explore some of these concepts such as new ways of budgeting, activity based costing and activity based management, rolling forecasts and also corporate performance management. 

• Examining some leading edge MA tools.
• Activity based methods.
• New methods of budgeting.
• Rolling forecasts.
• Balanced scorecards.
• Performance management.

Transforming the finance function and the finance professional

Finance Transformation

The major challenge in moving towards a world class finance function is how to transform the finance function. In order to achieve this it is most important to transform the finance professional. This session will look at how the modern finance professional has moved from merely looking at debits and credits to analyzing data and information and providing a valuable decision making contribution to management. 

• The changing business climate.
• The required shift in finance and accounting.
• Business analytics and finance.

Transforming the finance professional to a business partner

All research into the future of finance indicates that the most important aspect is – effective business partnering. Business partnering must happen at all levels in the organization. This session will look at the finance professional achieving a business partner role across the various levels of the organization – from mere finance analyst up to CFO and Finance Director role. Finance must support operations.

• The concept of finance business partnering.
• Attributes of business partners.
• The future of finance.
• Re-inventing the CFO and the finance function.

Wrap up: What has been learnt and any areas of concern?

Facilitator

Aubrey Joachim , Principal Consultant, Leading Edge Change

Aubrey Joachim (Australia) FCMA; MBA; GAICD is a Chartered Management Accountant – a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants UK, and MBA and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He has over 30 years of strategic management accounting experience with global conglomerates (Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever and US Energy giant McDermott International Inc.) in South Asia, the Middle East, South East Asia and UK.

Aubrey Joachim is also facilitating:

• Asset Economics, Lifecycle & Costing Management
• Budgeting and Forecasting for the Public Sector
• Strategic Planning, Budgeting and Rolling Forecasts

In-house Training