There needs to be another way in financial management collaborative and agile
I am a finance generalist and as that I believe in the value of a really good knowledge and experience based internal alert system when it comes to decisions I make or recommend.
However, you still will never get a lighthearted statement from me – I take what I do very seriousely and it will never be about politics, internal competitions or alike non value adding games. It will always be about the health and success of your company.
Finance is a very broad term and I am not the one you call if you are in need of a specialist in taxes. My near to 360 degree finance experience will let you know when to on-board a specialist for a specific challenge.
My focus and passion lies in data and processes especially within the framework of financial management, FP&A and business controlling.
Alexandra
von schirp-Keller
Because I refuse to think of finance departments as the spoilsports.
Often I have been observing a very tense relationship between finance professionals and other positions in companies since I started working on my first controlling job right after University, in which I immediately was meant to be the finance partner to a department head. Naive as I might have been straight out of my education, I was speechless about how the business perceived finance as a function you only would want to see once a year during the annual budgeting.
I had a different schooling on the added value finance is meant to bring to companies and I am very passionate about the behaviour side of things – such as how commission schemes and gamification parameters within motivate your sales people and how challenging must the budget be to make shareholders happy and still be doable at maximum strength, but how challenging can it actually be to simultaneously keep the rest of the company healthy, motivated and inspired to drive growth not only this year but every year.
Since then, I have been working on figuring out another way for myself: showing the added value we can provide in finance departments; coaching adjoining departments in what it is we are actually doing and that we are surely not asking these questions and challenging them out of thin air but that we are here for the health of the business. A goal which seriously should be everybodies no matter which position.
There are indeed two sides to this relationship, and I must admit that the finance departments are usually the last ones to implement innovation (although seriousely, even this term needs to be defined looking through the shades of finance and will never mean the same or perceived as glamorous as in other areas of the business).
Agile finance or beyond budgeting (which framework is more sutiable) may be very popular terms now a days. However, I believe the idea of finance departments indeed was never to be in the way of doing successful business – so why reinvent – but enabling them. That being said, still maybe the „HOW?“ was the real issue and with that agile finance and beyond budgeting concepts can really inspire us – even if feasibility needs to be tested in action.