Business Studies
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Abstract
The finance and accounting department in any organization provides financial management and controls to support the business operations. At Atha Corporation, the finance and accounting department plays a significant role in accomplishing the corporation’s goal of doubling sales through setting strategic goals; hence, planning and organization by the management are vital. The strategic goals are meant to guide the entire department to work in union and supporting each other to ensure financial data is up to date and available to sales and marketing teams to ensure increased production and sales growth. With new strategic goals, it becomes necessary for the managerial team to reorganize the departmental roles and responsibilities to ensure efficiency and accountability. Also, to ensure budgeting and financial data are well organized, the department requires a financial controller to be hired to aid in accomplishing the strategic goals within the stipulated period.
Keywords: strategic goals, reorganization, increased production, sales growth
Planning and Organization: Finance and Accounting
The finance and accounting department is the custodian of the Atha Corporation’s finance data and seeks to provide more analysis, insights, and recommendations to increase production and sales growth in the next three months. To meet these demands, the department has come with strategic goals on budgeting and forecasting, cost containment and purchasing management, and becoming more proactive with financial data to align and support the corporation goal of doubling the current $ 5 million in sales in the next year (Ainsworth & Deines, 2019).
Strategic Departmental Objectives
The department’s strategic budgeting and forecasting entail closely tracking the revenues and the corporation’s overall spending to ensure expenses are under control to increase profit margins. This strategic process will determine and detail the corporation’s short-term financial goals. Monitoring both the corporation’s and departmental budgets will aid in estimating accurate revenue levels based on demand forecasting (Weigel & Hiebl, 2018).
Similarly, by containing costs and managing purchases, the department aims at ensuring the quality of materials at the lowest possible prices and justifications for large material purchases. To ensure quality materials, the department will look into new spending levels and cut costs appropriately. In purchase management, establishing an inventory for Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) to keep facilities running is considered a perfect way to reduce costs and increase profits.
Moreover, by becoming proactive with financial data, we anticipate cooperating with the sales and marketing department by providing the current market information on competitor insights and building better selling tools. Data-driven decisions will help meet the corporation’s goal of doubling sales. The corporation will deliver more customer value with less, target the right profitable customers, outperform the competitors, and create value. This goal is in line with realizing that the sales and marketing department requires high-quality data about the corporation’s costs and price competition to accomplish its tasks.
Support Activities
In budgeting and forecasting, the department will require executive support in enhancing communication channels for staff cooperation in the overall and departmental budget reviews. Staff cooperation will ensure relevant information is obtained and utilized in making the right forecasting decisions for improving future sales. Furthermore, the department is only a compiler and coordinator of the budget and forecasting processes. It will require the participation of all staff members to ensure understanding, acceptance, and pursuance of common goals.
Consequently, the department will require cost containment resources to develop service automation comprehensive facility management software for implementing price controls and contractors benchmarking for particular types of maintenance and services. Implementation of the service automation will help control the Not-To Exceed (NTE) thresholds to ensure work orders are not unnecessarily billed for more than the agreed rates. Also, the department will require support in improving technology by creating a supply manager, a digital supplier catalog to track spare parts cost and warranty information. The supply manager will help the corporation gain access to the best available prices, a longer equipment lifecycle, and maintain spending limits.
Similarly, reconciling the finance and accounting department with the sales and marketing department will provide high-quality data for driving sales effectively. Financial data that is reliable reveals valuable selling processes and customer buying patterns for improving sales. Sales managers can be in a position to redesign sales incentive compensation plans by linking rewards, salespeople achievements, and strategic goals. This working relationship is essential to ensure performance targets between the two departments are aligned to avoid conflicts of cash spending despite high sales volumes. Also, email alias for the two departments will help in constant communication especially concerning new insight information and sales trends to maximize sales productivity.
Timeline
The departmental goals are meant to materialize effectively in three months, depending on the support accorded by the executive management team. However, each week the team will allocate three hours to work on the budgeting and forecasting and the cost containment and purchase management goals through brainstorming, recommendations, and evaluating the progress of the activities. The success of accomplishing these two goals depends mainly on the cooperation among the accounting and finance departmental teams. Performance analysis will be carried out monthly to reward the best performing members and encourage healthy competition.
Reconciling the department’s working relationship with the sales and marketing team where relevant financial data will be available depends on how the two teams will set aside time for regular meetings for discussions and briefing purposes. We assume that both departments will have achieved excellent results by the end of the three months through their collaboration.
Department’s Reorganization
Team reorganization is crucial in the finance and accounting department to ensure the set goals are accomplished effectively. While the reorganization is meant to improve collaboration, communication, and performance problems, it’s also possible for the team to feel stressed and disengaged; hence careful consideration of role allocation and responsibility shifting is paramount to ensure members’ interests are aligned with the department’s goals. (Kärkinen, 2018).
The creation of departmental group teams and dividing responsibilities is a top priority in the reorganization approach. Management will choose team leaders considering the confidence the team has in them to ensure motivation of transition. The leaders will be those who have portrayed the ability to handle changes effectively over the years determinable through performance-based analysis and possessing proven leadership skills.
Moreover, the departmental reorganization driving force in accomplishing the strategic goals is to encourage cross-functional relationships and collaboration. Group member’s participation is highly required in decision making and in fostering team building. Additionally, modeling and reinforcing the desired behavior among team members will be a good way of strengthening healthy collaboration relationships and ensuring effective top-down communication.
The reorganization process will develop training needs and resources to foster leadership skills in group team leaders. Management will create time and the necessary training resources to ensure the department doesn’t lag in improving performance and ensuring increased productivity through collaboration. The training skills requirements are coaching communication and motivating a team that may take several training sessions to accomplish the desired purpose. Hence, the department’s enthusiasm to get the job done will enable the success of the training process.
Critical Decision
The department recognizes the need to hire a financial controller to work under the guidance of the chief financial officer. The controller will help the finance department develop strategic plans for the corporation’s finances and ensure accountability. The qualified candidate will oversee all accounting and financial activities, including budget preparation and collecting financial data to ensure efficiency in accomplishing the strategic goals. The department’s wish is that the executive management team will create the new post in the shortest time possible to aid the team in accomplishing their target goals.
References
Ainsworth, P., & Deines, D. (2019). Introduction to accounting: An integrated approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Kärkinen, E. L. (2018). Essays on Efficiency of Reorganization Process: A Lifecycle Approach.
Weigel, C., & Hiebl, M. R. (2018). Beyond budgeting: review and research agenda. Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change.
