Free-Reprint Article Written by: Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM See Terms of Reprint Below.
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Part of it is an us-versus-them mentality that comes out of the front office staff who feel their jobs are more difficult because they deal with customers (compared to Finance, who deal with numbers). Additional Article Information: =============================== 678 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line Distribution Date and Time: 2009-03-10 11:24:00 Written By: Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM Copyright: 2009 Contact Email: mailto:[email protected] For more free-reprint articles by Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM, please visit: http://www.thePhantomWriters.com/recent/author/heather-villa,-cma,-mba,-msm.html ============================================= Special Notice For Publishers and Webmasters: ============================================= If you use this article on your website or in your ezine, We Want To Know About It. Use the following URL to let us know where you have used this article, and we will include a link to your website on thePhantomWriters.com: http://thephantomwriters.com/notify.php?id=6600&p=load HTML Copy-and-Paste and TEXT Copy-and-Paste Versions Of Article Are Available at: http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/db/v/finance-more-than-numbers.shtml#get_code --------------------------------------------------------------------- Finance: More Than Number Crunchers Copyright (c) 2009 Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM IAC Professionals http://www.iacprofessionals.com If you were to dissect the culture of a business, and you ask various people in an organization what the real roles of each department are, you'll find the well-known dichotomy between "front office" and "back office" operations. Front office staff are the people who deal with customers. They might be the customer service department, the sales department, and sometimes the marketing department (depending on how involved the marketing department is in the sales cycle). Back office staff are usually the admin assistants, HR, and the killjoy of all businesses - the Finance department. In businesses I've observed, Finance departments often face silent derision or disrespect. Part of it is an us-versus-them mentality that comes out of the front office staff who feel their jobs are more difficult because they deal with customers (compared to Finance, who deal with numbers). Unfortunately, this view is supported by management at all levels that give Finance the nasty job of accounts receivable, the inputting-heavy job of accounts payable, and the dull job of budget forecasting. But it doesn't have to be this way! Finance departments shouldn't be relegated to the back office in the hopes that their sharp pencils won't poke a customer in the eye! Finance departments can and should play a far more important role in the organization. Here are some ideas: POSSIBILITY 1: Finance should be more about business strategy than number prophecy. When the Finance department hounds the sales managers to get in their budgets and then turns them around for a final target budget for the year, their role is reduced to mere numerical interpreter. But what if Finance sat down with sales and talked to them about how their numbers connected to expected outcomes? And then, what if Finance sat down with the executives of the company and actually worked out a forecast that was tied to what the market was anticipating! Imagine a world where Finance's numbers were more than just a spreadsheet that gets pulled out at every quarterly review. POSSIBILITY 2: Finance should be more about opportunity. Many sales managers have some limited view into which customers are sending business. But the view isn't always perfect. Or complete. Finance should get involved to show how a customer is really impacting the business' bottom line. If Finance and Sales talked to each other, Sales might be shocked to discover that their biggest client is actually less valuable than expected because of the amount of work involved in keeping them as clients, or they might discover that a seemingly profitable client isn't profitable at all because their receivables get very, very old. Imagine a world where the Finance department can relate true business impacting information to Sales to tell them which opportunities are truly the most profitable. POSSIBILITY 3: Finance should be selling, too. When Finance gets the job of following up on accounts receivables, they can potentially do more harm than good. Finance people are highly skilled at numbers, and they might be good "people-oriented" staff, but they are rarely trained in the art of sales. However, when a Finance person, tasked with accounts receivables, gets adequate training in receivables AND customer service AND sales, their success rate at getting the receivables paid can increase, but so will their success rate at winning more business. There are so many more opportunities, too. Businesses should be using their accounts payable list as a prospecting list. They should be temporarily swapping roles between Finance and Sales for brief "see-how-the-other-side-does-it" days to enable new appreciation and new connections. Finance should sit in on sales calls to see why Sales sometimes feels like they need to bend the rules to close the deal (and Sales should shadow the work of Finance so they know what work needs to happen at the backend if they don't assess risk adequately during the sale). The bottom line for businesses should not be derived from a cloistered Finance department. Instead, a business can uncover new and exciting opportunities when it makes its Finance department an integral part of the entire business. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Heather Villa's professional philosophy is that her role in the success of others will ultimately bring about her own success. Whether she is working from an advanced accounting or challenging marketing angle, offering guidance in development, organization, supervision, or administration, Heather makes sure that her clients get accurate answers from a professional that they can depend on. As CEO of IAC Professionals (http://www.iacprofessionals.com), Heather instituted a company-wide philosophy of professional and personal integrity, and IAC soared. Would you like to find out how Heather Villa can help drive your business toward greater success? http://www.hireheathervilla.com --- END ARTICLE --- Get HTML or TEXT Copy-and-Paste Versions Of This Article at: http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/db/v/finance-more-than-numbers.shtml#get_code ..................................... TERMS OF REPRINT - Publication Rules (Last Updated: May 11, 2006) Our TERMS OF REPRINT are fully enforcable under the terms of: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.2281.ENR: ..................................... *** Digital Reprint Rights *** * If you publish this article in a website/forum/blog, You Must Set All URL's or Mailto Addresses in the body of the article AND in the Author's Resource Box as Hyperlinks (clickable links). * Links must remain in the form that we published them. 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Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM can be reached at: [email protected] *** Print Publication Reprint Rights *** If you desire to publish this article in a PRINT publication, you must contact the author directly for Print Permission at: mailto:[email protected] ..................................... If you need help converting this text article for proper hyperlinked placement in your webpage, please use this free tool: http://thephantomwriters.com/link-builder.pl ===================================================================== ABOUT THIS ARTICLE SUBMISSION http://thePhantomWriters.com is a paid article distribution service. thePhantomWriters.com and Article-Distribution.com are owned and operated by Bill Platt of Stillwater, Oklahoma USA. Learn more about our article distribution services by visiting: http://thephantomwriters.com/x.pl/tpw/info/article-distribution/index.html The content of this article is solely the property and opinion of its author, Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM http://www.iacprofessionals.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ---------------------------------------------------------------------
