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Useless Controls

A company seal is a useless control
A company seal aka a useless control. Photo by 戸山 神奈 on Unsplash

Because I was once an auditor, I have an obsession with useless controls. This is where an organisation makes you do something which they think is providing some kind of internal control. However, when you think about it in more depth, you realise it isn’t providing any control at all.

Some examples of useless controls

I had locked myself out of the online portal for an old pension scheme. I rang up and gave my account number. They asked for my full address as a security measure before they reset my account.

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A happier annual budgeting process

Photo by John Peters on Unsplash

When I had more junior finance roles in larger organisations, I often found the annual budgeting process to be somewhere between traumatic and soul-destroying. Week after week of meetings and emails and multiple versions of clunky spreadsheets.

So when I became a Finance Director, I thought long and hard about what made organisational budgeting so awful. I then identified four key components of a happier budgeting process;

  • alignment
  • training
  • tools
  • trust

This post explores these further.

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Choosing a new EPOS system – hospitality

An EPOS system in an old pub.

A good Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) system can make your business run much more smoothly. However, there are lots of systems out there which do very different things and lots of pushy salespeople. So it’s very easy to be seduced by something that looks fancy but turns out to be difficult to customise for your business.

In this post I set out a few things to consider if you want a new EPOS system.

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Finance team recruitment

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

With over ten years experience in senior finance positions, I’ve recruited quite a few finance team members, and helped others do the same. I’ve learned what works for me when it comes to finance team recruitment.

Most of this is applicable to any candidate search process but I’ve added a few thoughts throughout about what might be different about recruiting finance team members.

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Process Improvement: the weekly shop

Business process improvement - post-it notes and mapping exercises.
Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash

Sometimes external circumstances force process improvement upon you.

Businesses across the world are changing rapidly to deal with the enormity of the changes that the plague has thrust upon us. Customer interactions and supply chains have transformed overnight.

Meanwhile, in the domestic sphere, I have achieved a reduction in a routine task from approx 3 hours a week to just half an hour. The task?

Shopping.

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How to be a good Excel user

What do you need to learn to be “good at Excel”? What Excel training should be mandatory for finance teams?

I really rate the ICAEW’s spreadsheet competency framework as a tool to use to diagnose where you and your team are at and where you should be. It breaks down users into four types – Basic, General, Creator and Developer – and allocates the skills that each level should have.

This is much more helpful to me than users saying that they are “intermediate” or “advanced” users. When I recruit for roles I often use the framework in the job description.

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