Part I: Areas to Focus on in the Next Six Months
There are some steps that you can take to get started very quickly in changing the way you handle the processes within your company. They are:
| Goal | Reason |
| 1. Invest in accounts payable technology. | The accounts payable team is the center of the accounting team. Investing in accounts payable technology pays high dividends for the finance team, the budget holders, and their administrators. This will take around a six-month time frame and thus you need to start now. |
| 2. Get month-end reporting to the senior management team (SMT) down to three working days post month-end. | If you are not this quick, too much time is being absorbed by this low-value task. We need to free up time to provide decision-based reports during the month, which are much more valuable. |
| 3. Draft a dashboard with your key result indicators (KRIs) for your board of directors. | This will revolutionize the board’s finance report and can be set up very quickly (e.g., one person did it over one evening). |
| 4. Start work on your annual reporting cycle so that it can be completed and signed off by the auditors in 15 working days post year-end. | You never get thanked for this activity so streamlining annual reporting is a must. |
| 5. If your annual planning cycle is to be completed within the next six months, plan now to complete it within a 10-working-day time frame. | Your annual plan takes too long, undermines reporting, creates dysfunctional budget holders, and smart organizations do not do ... |
