presentation

Communicating financials to management: developing effective reporting mechanisms

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Back in August I gave a presentation entitled as above for CPA Australia.  I seem to have neglected to upload the powerpoint and speaking notes.  This post addresses that oversight.

See below for an overview of the presentation.

Presentation overview

The need to communicate complex financial information to management need not be an onerous task. Indeed, the ability to simplify this information and turn it into a strategic tool is becoming a greater priority in many organisations.

This session will explain:

  • How to develop effective reporting mechanisms that ensures data of high integrity and quality
  • Responding to management information needs – how to develop a process that ensures timely response
  • Other key reporting and systems issues that affect how information is presented and used

Further details are contained in the downloadable attachments.

Feedback on ‘Communicating financials to management: Developing effective reporting mechanisms’

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Back in August, I gave a presentation for CPA Australia at Royal on the Park, which had as its objectives:

  • How to develop effective reporting mechanisms that ensures data of high integrity and quality
  • Responding to management information needs: how to develop a process that ensures timely response
  • Other key reporting and systems issues that affect how information is presented and used

I note incidentally that I haven’t posted my speaking notes online yet – I must do that.

Anyway, feedback was good, even if I’ve not picked up any clients out of it :).  Here is the feedback the presentation received:

Session Title:    ‘Communicating financials to management: Developing effective reporting mechanisms’
Venue:     Royal on thePark, Brisbane
Date:     26/8/2008

Your overall Rating:    4.35
Technical Content rating:    4.52
Presentation Material rating:    4.43

All comments specific to your presentation

  • Good presenter. Liked the way he asked what people wanted out of session & made sure he covered those points.
  • Very good presenter. Showed a great awareness for presenting on & answering what we wanted to get out of the session. Terrific.

I continue to thank Alan Anderson for showing me his tactic of plain old ‘ask the audience what they want’ for presentations.  The audience, not surprisingly, always seems to appreciate it, and it’s hard to miss the mark if you can at least link back to those dot points.

Of course, if someone comes in for the wrong session it can be very entertaining.

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ITGI Roundtable discussion

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Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the Brisbane ISACA chapter’s Executive Lunch with John Thorp on the topic of Value Governance, Investment Management and Portfolio Management.  Amongst many other qualifications, John chairs the ITGI Val IT Committee.

John’s luncheon presentation was very, very good, and reaffirmed some of the positions I’ve had for some time now.  What I love about COBIT and VAL IT is that it is bringing a framework to all that stuff we have in the past done ‘just because’. 

Some highlights for me from John’s presentation were the following points:

  1. IT investments don’t exist, this is all about investment in IT-enabled change – which we can only change when business and IT know who is responsible for what.
  2. A nice little formula from John:  OO + NT = COO [Old Organisation + New Technology = Complex Old Organisation].  Seen that a few times.
  3. Appealing to the television geeks in the audience (like myself), John pilloried the Star Trek school of management – ‘Make It So!’ is rarely as successful as it is in Star Trek.  For a start, most people have no common view as to what ‘it’ is.
  4. John has a nice turn of phrase – ‘bad news does not get better with age’; ‘decibel-based decision-making’, ‘more effort into less things for more value’ (so true!).
  5. Apparently governance goes back to the Greek word ‘kubernan’, which is defined as ‘continually steering or adjusting to stay on course’.
  6. There is a new VAL IT – VAL IT 2.0, which partners COBIT more closely than in the past, and is maturing.  I suspect that in a year or two the course I am giving on IT Governance needs to pick up on this point and move with it.
  7. What I have always referred to as a ‘business prioritisation forum’ is better called an ‘investment services board’ – at least that is what it is in VAL IT parlance.

I believe John’s presentation will soon be on the Chapter website.

Last night I had also had the honour of attending dinner for a recorded roundtable discussion on the topic of IT Governance, with many local professionals giving their thoughts and comments.  One of the curious things that really did highlight for me is probably that the term ‘IT Governance’ is all wrong – which is why ISACA’s new qualification is called ‘CGEIT’ – Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT.  I haven’t met anyone yet who actually likes the term, yet we keep using it and getting confused with corporate governance issues.

I mean, why don’t we have a marketing governance or an HR Governance, or such like?

At any rate, John is very passionate about advancing the profession in the world of IT management.

It was a good night, and we certainly managed to relax after the microphone was turned off in the convention centre.  I was bitterly disappointed though – the Plough Inn was closed at 10.20 on a Thursday night.  Bitterly disappointed!

Feedback from Optimising your financial reporting systems for long-term value

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Well I did say the test of transparency would be whether I rushed to put up a poor evaluation of a presentation.  I did a roadshow for CPA Australia in July (24th and 25th) in Sydney and Melbourne to the topic of ‘Optimising your financial reporting systems for long-term value’.  The feedback that was received was not as good as I would have liked but if you’re going to give presentations you’re not going to find it possible to do really well all the time.

I did spend at least a day putting together the presentation and trying to convert COBIT-type thinking to a more practical consideration.  Probably predictably the feedback was mixed.

At any rate I am posting the feedback.  It’s always a good thing to be transparent and honest, I am sure.  Just ask governments.  Firstly the average overall rating was 3.9 (where 1 = poor, 2 = fair, 3 = average, 4 = very good and 5 = excellent).  So I suppose if we rounded it’s still a ‘Very Good’ assessment.  Technical content received an average of 4.27 and presentation skills 3.96.  CPA’s look for 4.2 so I guess that’s not as good as it could have been.  I’m hoping the audience were hard markers.

Comments specific to my presentation included:

  • Great.  Nice to see some personality, relevance and interaction with us.
  • Presentation too long – had to rush through part of it
  • Great presenter but subject matter much too vague
  • Good speaker, covered the topic well, shame we ran out of time
  • Gave some practical things/going to ask myself
  • Great – very knowledgeable
  • Too much consulting waffle
  • Great – Entertaining

The only unambiguously negative comment of course is the ‘too much consulting waffle’ comment.  Personally I thought I had added just the right amount of consulting waffle but perhaps some people don’t like as much waffle as others do. :).

Overall the ratings are a ‘Very Good’ and it’s of course silly to go off the deep end over that.  Still I would have liked to do better on that score.

Ah well, ‘Must try harder’.  

Optimising your financial reporting systems for long-term value

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I presented for CPA Australia on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, firstly in Sydney, and then in Melbourne.  The topic was ‘Optimising your financial reporting systems for long-term value’, and was part of their streamlining finance processes conference.

Overall the presentations went fairly well.  There’s always a conflict between war stories, which are interesting and helpful, and content, which is helpful.  I try not to have a lecture, but I still managed to run out of time both times.  Note to self:  cut down, cut down, cut down.

Anyhoo, I promised that I’d upload an example survey tool and my speaker notes, so they are attached to this blog post.

You can download the Speaker Notes here, and you can download the full presentation here. The speaker notes are just the dot points I intended to cover off in the presentation.

The example survey can be downloaded here.

I stayed at the Sydney Marriott overnight – that was quite nice:

If you attended, please feel free to give feedback.  I hope something was obtained from the presentation, and if there are questions please feel free to give me a call.