The Strategic Finance Workout: Test and Build Your Financial Performance - Softcover

Parker, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0273625659 ISBN 13: 9780273625650

Publisher: Financial Times Management, 1997

Synopsis

This book is based around a proven and simple-to-use workshop which enables managers to develop their strategic finance capabilities in the minimum amount of time and without the need for consultants.

About this title

About the Author

David Parker, BA, MSc, FCA, is a chartered accountant who has been involved with management training and consultancy for over 25 years. He has degrees in economics and accounting and accounting and finance from Bristol University and the London School of Economics. A member of the Associate Faculty of Henley Management College, he has lectured and written about all aspects of accounting and finance to managers. For a time he lectured in the USA at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, before returning to the UK. He has designed and presented courses for business managers in companies such as IBM, Sony, ICI, Shell and British Aerospace. He also presently lectures in accounting and finance on a number of MBA courses. His wide-ranging consultancy experience has been gained from his accountancy practice and his family business - supplier of laboratory equipment to schools and colleges - in which, until recently he was managing director.

His recent publications include The Strategic Investment Decision, with Roger Oldcorn, published by Pitman Professional in 1996.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

Is your business fit and well financially? This Workout shows you how to test and to maintain the financial fitness of your business. You will see what has to be achieved to make the business a financial success and t what you have to do to keep things that way. It requires that you, the reader, carry out a lot of tasks yourself, so you can test your own financial awareness and test your understanding as you go along. You perform the workouts, the exercises and the executive actions.

I would not like to tie the strategic financial management of business in too closely with the analogy of a keep fit program but the likeness is extremely apt. There are two reasons for this. One is that there is a very genuine sense that a business can be said to be 'financially fit'. The second reason is that financial fitness and performance can be measured - just as you can measure your physical fitness by taking your pulse or your blood pressure or by timing yourself over 100 or 1,500 meters. You can measure, too, the financial state of a company by listing its resources and by measuring its performance in terms of its profit or its cash flows.

The keep fit program - The Strategic Finance Workout - has to be for the long haul. We are not interested here with losing a few pounds (of weight!) - and then putting them on again. What is needed is a t program of incremental improvement over the longer term, to maintain and possibly improve financial performance - perhaps including some fast bursts of activity from time to time. Essentially, what is required is a continuous program which will keep the business fit -one which will keep a 'tight ship'. You may be able to run the 100 meters in ten seconds, but after that, what then? The running of a business is rather more like preparing for the marathon . . . and then running another marathon time and time again. You have to keep the business fit all the time. This Workout helps you do that.

In the text, there are short-term, 'aerobic' exercises and long-term, 'jogging' exercises which aim to bring the business up to scratch and then keep it in shape. In this way, the business will achieve its strategic objectives. Many chapters have a Warm-up Workout which tests your ' knowledge of the subject matter included in the particular chapter. There are no answers provided for the Warm-up Workouts because the questions are answered in the text. If you feel comfortable with the questions, you might wish to skate over the material in the chapter or even skip it altogether and move on to the next chapter. If you would like to know more about the issues raised by the Warm-up Workout, !i~ work through the material in the relevant chapter, taking care to complete the exercises which sharpen your understanding. All the time, try to apply the subject matter, if at all possible, to the business you are involved in or to a business with which you are familiar.

Each exercise has a suggested answer to it. It is important that you read the suggested answers because they usually form part of the flow of text. In many chapters, rather than the application exercises, you will find suggestions for 'Executive Action'. These are activities you will find useful in making sure your business keeps financially fit. You undertake ~' these 'off-line' as it were - there are no answers to such activities, just things to do.

The book is designed for those who manage a business of their own, or who manage a business unit in a larger concern. If you do not work in a profit-making enterprise, you will still find much of the material is relevant - or you can apply the ideas presented, to a business with which you are familiar. I always feel that it is best if you can picture a particular business when applying financial techniques. In this Workout, the business can be either in the service sector or in manufacturing or distribution. The principles are the same and they can be applied to all businesses.

My sincere thanks go to all my colleagues at Henley Management College for the many discussions about the subject matter in the field of accounting and finance. The ideas from such debate have become the spark for much of the material which has gone into the writing of this

Workout. Thanks also to Richard Stagg of Pitman Publishing for the concept of the Workout and for his unswerving support in the project. Very many thanks, too, to my secretary, Geraldine Moss, who has so carefully word-processed what has been, in many cases, an almost unreadable draft manuscript. Any errors and misconceptions in the -material, of course, remain entirely mine.David R Parker
Codicote, Hertfordshire

Edition details

• Publisher: Financial Times Management
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0273625659
• ISBN 13: 9780273625650
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 246