We are regularly asked why a business should have a chief financial officer when the business owner already has an accountant who completes his/her annual report and accounts. The answer is that they perform very different roles. As a keen archer, I use the analogy of receiving a report of your scores at the end […]
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Back in the nineties, interim managers were selected for their broad business experience, managerial ability and agility. One writer on the subject even went so far as to suggest that successful interim mangers were generally thinner and more athletic than the norm. While you can’t get away with such sweeping generalisations about the BMI of […]
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For any business, paying taxes on time is an important part of your financial management and there are significant penalties for late submission or late payment, as well as the distraction you get from having HMRC breathing down your neck. The main cause for delays is either incompetence in getting the forms submitted on time, […]
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‘Cash is king’ for SME’s and all companies need to employ best practice cash management policies. Based on my extensive experience as a part time Finance Director, I offer the following key practical tips: Cash planning Ensure that a cash flow forecast is updated regularly (daily/monthly/weekly) – it can be a simple excel spreadsheet for […]
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‘The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, gang aft agley.’ Or, as Robert Burns might have written in more standard English, ‘often go awry’. The poet neatly summarises the central idea of risk management: we know that things will go wrong, but not precisely what or when. The discipline is to identify in advance the […]
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The reality of business today is that organisations are much more widely dispersed. Even smaller organisations might operate from multiple sites that make justifiable business sense. Whilst there may be good reasons for having staff dispersed, people management becomes more of a challenge for those leaders that that have responsibility for performance and development. For […]
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Your operations or IT guy has made the business case, the specification is drawn up and the request for quotation has been issued. You’ve seen a couple of providers, taken up the references, and now you’re ready to buy that exciting new kit which will enable your business growth to continue. And then the last, […]
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A guest blog by David Croydon of Hilltop Consulting. If you run a business (that is to say, a proper business with employees, not the lifestyle business I run), I’ll have a bet with you that virtually every problem or issue you confront comes under one or more of three simple headings: Time; Team; Money. […]
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The UK is expected to be strongest performing of the largest economies in 2014, with GDP growth expected to exceed its pre-recession peak this summer. This is not the only good news for the UK however as productivity levels, albeit still below their pre-recession levels, are showing significant improvement, rising 0.3% in the final quarter […]
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According to the International Monetary Fund’s ‘World Economic Outlook’, Britain will be the best performing of the world’s largest economies in 2014. A key contributory factor to Britain’s expected 2.9% GDP growth this year is the strongest rate of growth seen in the manufacturing sector for three years; anticipated at 3.8%. The manufacturing sector in […]
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