The CFO Series provides a convenient, one-stop way for CFOs and those who aspire to be CFOs, to an entire year of CPE with a single decision. Each day consists of a subject matter expert leading discussions about four different topics. The CFO Series features high-quality presentations and an interactive, executive level colleague-to-colleague approach with case studies, group discussions, and team exercises.
Each topic and each day stands on its own. If you are not sure about making a multi-day commitment, sign up for just a single day. We think you will come back for more!
Objectives:
- How to identify and track your organization’s critical success factors
- Why “What Causes Cost?” is the most important question in management accounting
- How to use metrics to create flexible budgets and rolling forecasts
- How to convert “too much data” into useful information
Topics Discussed
Corporate Performance Management
2 Accounting Credits
Poor strategy execution frustrates many executives as their organizations struggle with performance improvement, making decisions using intuition in the absence of hard data. Corporate performance management (CPM) seamlessly integrates many techniques including strategy maps and a balanced scorecard. Together they align manager and employee behavior, actions, and priorities using key performance indicators (KPIs) with specific targets to enable accountability.
Effective Management Accounting
2 Accounting Credits
Critics have claimed that traditional managerial accounting is at best useless and at worst dysfunctional and misleading. Most line managers do not trust their management accounting data.
21st Century management accounting develops cost/unit metrics that are useful for budgeting, cost analysis and control. Current methods bring truly accurate fact-based costing visibility, tracing costs and identifying cause-and-effect relationships rather than broadly allocating overhead. This information provides the ability to reveal the true profit margins for products as well as for specific sales channels and customers.
Removing the barriers caused by your current management accounting techniques can provide huge rewards.
Driver-Based Budgeting
2 Accounting Credits
The annual budgeting process is often criticized as a fiscal exercise done by the accountants that is obsolete soon after it is published, prone to gamesmanship, cumbersome, not being volume sensitive, and disconnected from the strategy and needed risk mitigation spending. You can resolve these deficiencies using capacity-sensitive driver-based expense projections. Driver-based budgeting allows for quick scenario planning and far easier analysis of a growing organization whose future may look nothing like today. The budget can be periodically refreshed to create rolling financial forecasts extending beyond the fiscal year end.
Learn how managerial accounting can become managerial economics.
Business Intelligence and Data Analytics
2 Accounting Credits
Volatility and complexity are the new normal. Most organizations are drowning in data but starving for information. The finance and accounting function has the opportunity to leverage Big Data and the continuum of analytics – descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive. All are useful for better decision making. Collecting, validating, and reporting data is not the same thing as analyzing information where we can glean valuable, actionable insights. In some ways the finance function is many years behind other disciplines such as marketing, sales, and supply chain managers, in applying analytics. How can the CFO’s function catch up?
Understand how Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics (BA) can help you make sense of your organization’s data.
Cases and Group Discussion
The CFO Series provides extensive case study analysis and many opportunities for group discussion.
Target Audience: This series is for people who are, or aspire to be, chief financial officers. We target the discussions to people in medium-sized organizations.
Level of Knowledge: Intermediate
CPE Credit: 8 Accounting credits
Prerequisite: Preferably management accounting experience, or at least six (6) months of professional financial statement analysis experience.
Advanced Preparation: Experience preparing or reviewing accounting processes and reports. Experience preparing or reviewing financial performance reports. Experience working with internal clients or external clients and business leaders. Bring a laptop.
Acronym: CFOS6-23
Vendor: The Knowledge Institute, LLC
Discussion Leader: Gary Cokins, MBA, CPIM
