Sometimes it’s easier if I just give you an idea of how I have helped other companies* so here are a few to be going on with…
The insurance company
This company had a finance team that was literally behind closed doors.
Unfortunately, this meant that they weren’t adding value to the business and had become a processing hub.
Even worse than this, other department staff didn’t want to interact with them and there was a great deal of reluctance to pass through the big set of double doors that closed off the accounts section.
This meant that the CFO found that he had difficulty adding depth to his board commentary and was often taken by surprise by operational developments.
I set up a business partnering function and coached the new business partners through the startup phase giving them a mix of formal training and hands-on workshops to embed the new behaviours that we wanted to see.
The CFO was delighted with the results and the business felt much more at ease with the finance function.
The Finance company
This business had grown very rapidly and the finance function had begun to show cracks, as it couldn’t keep up with the workload and the control functions, had broken down.
I spent a good deal of time working out how the CFO would like to see the team operating and what the CEO saw as the important aspects that he’d like to see addressed.
I put together a full training and development plan that enabled the team to become more effective and allowed them to get through more work in less time.
I coached the FC and junior managers to bring their skill levels up to speed and set up a development plan that the company could follow that helped with engagement and retention.
The utility company
This business was part of the new generation of utility providers and had grown very quickly.
As is common with fast-growth startups the business had let its finance team sit on the back burner and as a result they had become demotivated and were suffering from burn out.
I took over the team, set clear objectives and invested time and effort in training and coaching to get them to where they needed to be.
by the end of the process, the business had a world-class finance team and was enjoying the benefits of a finance function that had become a full and invested part of the company once again.
*Note that I purposely anonymise my stories. Some of them would be a bit embarrassing for my clients and to avoid cherry-picking or grey areas I anonymise everything.