Systems - Cost. The MD of a systems integrator and software business wanted divisional managers, newly profit responsible, to be able to trade with each other at arm's length. Devised simple, elegant costing and project control system, giving "real-time" elimination of Interdivisional Profits in Inventory whatever the trading pattern.

Systems - Financial. Designed clerical systems and methods to reportray a group consolidation in price-adjusted terms. The new methodology saved an anticipated 3-4 month delay in reporting the results for a quoted Group. A sub-project was the collection and compilation, from raw economic data, of price/currency indices for 35 countries and 150+ group companies.

Systems - Control. Restructured a sales force payment system, and trained managers so as to:-
save approx £30k pa in programming fees, pay the sales force on time, smooth the reward system, free up key clerical resources for more productive work, give the sales force management better control, and senior management better information.

Systems - Management. Designed, and showed staff how to implement a simple cheap database /spreadsheet system to automatically recost/reprice their products. Saved the pain and expense of a 6 week clerical recosting exercise each year, provided ongoing control where none had existed previously, and a basis for rationalising ranges and illogical pricing patterns, in very competitive international markets. Clarified overhead allocations and recoveries.

Tax / Corporate Finance. Restructured a takeover so as to eliminate a £450,000 CGT liability, which possibility had escaped the attention of both the City teams involved.

Project Management. Managed a 5000 man-day Systems Recovery project to completion, two days ahead of tight deadlines, on cost and above quality.

Modelling - Physical. Built (mainly in Basic) a computer costing model of a new production process, so that evaluating the cost consequences of each process change took minutes, not two man- weeks. Later, to overcome a production problem, and serve the needs of the engineering and metallurgical team, altered the same model to work in CALORIES rather than currency, to explore the joining temperatures in a metals furnace where monitoring and control possibilities were very constrained. The theoretical solution probably saved weeks of expensive iteration using real materials on the "live" plant.

Modelling - Financial. Built a 1000+ line spreadsheet model of a business start-up to explore project alternatives and physical constraints such as stock control issues, as well as modelling P & L, Balance Sheet, cash flow and key ratios.

Culture/Organisation. In the mid-eighties, before "empowerment" was in our vocabularies, persuaded board colleagues to make the next level of management more responsible for tactics and some strategy for their product lines. The aim was to free the Board to deal with strategy and expansion. Lived through the shock of being told what changes our subordinates actually proposed. Successfully counselled less secure Board colleagues who could not stomach the changes, insisting on a return to the previous top-down leadership approach.

Treasury/ Commercial. Established project controls, treasury/bank cover, and accounting/reporting for a valuable medium-term contract to supply and erect capital equipment. Contract was in Saudi Rials (recently devalued); sourced in US dollars, Swedish Kroner, Austrian Schilling, Brazilian Cruzeiros/Cruzados, and Sterling. Corporate base currency was US dollars, important intermediate entity currencies were Sterling and Deutchmarks.

Software skills. Pointed out logical design or software errors, in Lotus Supercalc and Wordperfect.

Purchasing/commercial. Analyzed the sales presentation and draft contract of a key raw material supplier. Spotted that while the initial contract price offered would certainly save £100k's, when production volumes changed, costs would be many time higher. Colleagues concluded the contract at approx 1/3rd the initial price offered, safeguarding future as well as present savings.

An Anecdote

Information into action

In my first month at an engineering firm, after a period of extremely difficult trading under a "hands off" Finance Director, I asked what we were going to sell next month. Having dealt with the initial reaction to the new "Mr Moneybags" asking questions about operating matters, I ascertained that there were 6 critical pieces of capital equipment to ship if we were to meet target and contain the overdraft.

After month-end I looked at the Sales. 3 of the items had not shipped. I asked why.

The first item lacked some special stainless bolts (so we commenced action to improve procurement).

For the second item, the customer had asked that we defer delivery, so we had done so. We had also deferred invoicing. I then reviewed the contract terms for this item, which allowed us to invoice, and to charge storage, so the customer was asked to accept both these, and they did. I booked the sale and the extra storage revenue I had created.

On the third item, no one knew why it had not been completed.

I commenced a process to formalise the review of expected deliveries, then the organisation knew what it had promised, both to me and to its customers. Pretty soon the organisation was making its numbers every month, as well as taking pride in its delivery performance. And of course, the staff thought they were doing all this (as indeed they were), and were so glad the new accounting reports helped them check it.