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The planning and financial control area of a company is responsible for strategic planning, producing budgets and providing decision making support to company leaders and the managers of other departments. The professional controller is the one who manages and coordinates the work of this department, assuring the quality and results of its work.

Overall the manager of the financial control area is a strategist with managerial responsibilities, because by consolidating data and providing management support, this professional guarantees that all of the business areas are well run and efficient, and that the company’s CEO and executives are taking good care of the organization.

Find out a bit more about the importance of this position in a company’s hierarchy and the advantages that this person can offer to your company’s business.

Optimization of accounting processes

In the past, the managers of the financial control area were accounting specialists. This has changed, but a professional controller is still an accounting specialist — with knowledge of administration, management and business strategy as well as finance.

With these professional duties and knowledge, this manager simulates scenarios for the accounting department, analyzes its structure and may possibly identify changes that need to be made while keeping up with the department’s progress and making projections for it. Thus, this professional will use diagnostics to evaluate the accounting department and its processes and support the department’s manager in making decisions to optimize it.

Improving the measurement of results

One of the duties of a professional controller is evaluating results and also understanding them. This means that, along with measuring and documenting results, this person knows how to define targets, compare budgeted and actual numbers, and will know what has enabled the company to achieve or not achieve its goals, and will also be able to identify the factors and actions that have influenced the obtained metrics.

Through this work, the business will be better able to control its numbers and provide its managers and executives with greater insights. As a consequence, the company will be able to improve its operations, its budgeting, management and its overall and segment strategies and actions.

Improved decision making by managers

The company as a whole has its strategic planning and, within thus, budgets and strategies for each department. To help the departments develop these budgets and strategies, the planning and financial control area consolidates information on all of these factors and provides support for the company executives and managers in their decision making.

The results of this process are more agile decisions and more efficient budgets. As a result, the company’s prospects will improve and it will start to invest its financial resources better.

Thus it’s correct to say, for these reasons and countless others, that having a professional controller responsible for the planning and financial control area offers a competitive advantage, because the strategic and managerial improvements and changes that this professional promotes will result in improved company performance in the market.

For example: with leaner but still appropriate budgets, it’s possible to maintain good processes, profit and a positive return on investment and still have money left over to invest in business development to improve market penetration.

Improved financial analysis

Taking into account the company’s capacity to supply strategic data in real time, it becomes easier to perform reliable audits, which will diminish errors and fraud considerably.

This way the company gains credibility with the market, its partners and possible investors. It’s not incorrect to conclude that the work of a controller, when well executed in a strategic manner, can help increase the market value of a business.

In addition, efficient financial control guarantees security for your company when it comes time to make investments and make other strategic financial decisions, such as mergers for example.

Strategic analysis of current actions

In the not too distant past, it was impossible for a company to analyze the actions it was taking while they were being executed. One had to wait for them to finish to conclude whether they were successful or not.

This led to losses when planning was not executed well. However, today with a professional controller this situation can easily be turned around.

The strategic analysis of information makes it possible for this professional to verify when an action is not generating the expected results. In some cases, this can happen during the first moments of execution. Thus a company can interrupt a strategy before it leads to irreversible results.

The data that this action presents will be used for analysis, giving these professionals the chance to study why this error occurred in order to avoid the occurrence of similar errors.

Creation of efficient reports

When well executed, the work of a controller ensures that your company focuses on the correct analysis of information, generating efficient and easily understood reports.

It’s important to emphasize that all of a business’s important decisions should be made based on this type of document. We may conclude that many of the losses that companies have had have been due to erroneous information in problematic reports.

Ensuring the reliability of this information is of key importance to any business. Achieving this level of quality is only possible when the company has a professional working in the control area, because this ensures that there is a strategic analysis of the data through management software which will present really credible reports.

Compliance with regulatory norms

Companies have the responsibility of complying with the requirements of various regulatory committees. Non-compliance with these rules can cause grave damage to a business’s image, and can even put the company’s operations at risk.

To meet these obligations, it’s important to maintain a level of discipline in operations, which is possible only through the strategic vision provided by the constant analysis of data from your operational processes.

This way it’s possible to verify if production processes are in compliance with the parameters required by regulatory agencies. In addition to this, the presence of a professional controller ensures the veracity of the documents presented by the organization, guaranteeing its compliance with norms, because they are generated by the latest software which can attest to its accuracy.

If a company concludes that its processes contain errors, it’s possible to correct them in a rapid manner to meet regulatory demands and avoid recalls or problems with the company’s image.

Now do you understand the importance of a professional controller to a company? Did you like our tips? Then follow us on the social networks and follow our updates. We’re on Facebook, Twitter and Linkdeln!