Surgent's Controllership Skills Update: Current Survival Skills

Overview

The role of financial professionals has and continues to change in organizations. The stereotype of collecting and reporting data has been replaced by a broader vision, which focuses on improving an organization's results today and preparing it for the future. This brief program offers specific actions that can be implemented by financial personnel to expand their role through improving their organization. The actions and techniques provided build upon and improve activities that exist in many organizations (measuring, budgeting, hiring, risk management, etc.), as well as providing insights into capital allocation, cash management, valuation techniques, variables that influence capacity levels, M&A activity and actions to increase efficiency and innovation. Updated to include the impact of tax regulations, additional examples of M&A, alliances and strategic spin-offs/splits, methods to improve efficiency from existing activities, and current organizational changes employed to manage and accelerate growth.

Prerequisites

Experience and/or exposure to financial management

Objectives

• Provide an overview of the expanded role of financial professionals
• Gain knowledge in a diverse range of activities
• Explore analytical valuation techniques that are useful over a board range of events
• Understand the potential value of improving existing practices and/or implementing missing ones
• Recognize immediate actions that can result in measurable benefits to an organization
• Identify specific areas for further exploration 

Highlights

• Changing Role of Financial Professionals:
• Priorities
• Change in mission
• Valued-added actions
• Strategic Measurements:
• Common errors and guidelines for improvement
• Balanced scorecard
• Strategy development and implementation
• Budgeting basics and next steps
• Risk Management:
• Recent lessons, including Black Swan events
• Defining Enterprise Risk Management (ERM)
• Implementation
• Developing a Financial Leadership Pipeline:
• Changing employment environment
• Retaining the right employees
• Compensation
• Hiring process
• Capital Projects:
• Types of projects
• Factors affecting capacity
• Valuation techniques
• Cash management
• M&A Activity:
• Current environment
• Controller’s role
• Strategic questions
• Sample transactions
• Due diligence
• Implementation
• Introducing Improvements/Innovation:
• Getting started
• Establishing an environment
• Potential first projects
• Organizational structure