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Careers 87 Careers Becoming a real business partner In the first of three articles on becoming a real business partner, Peter Gillespie explains the challenges that Chartered Accountants will likely encounter on the journey. Imagine you’re a Chartered Accountant who has decided to build a career beyond practice, but let’s assume that you aren’t yet the financial director. Obviously, we take for granted that you can ‘do’ the normal tasks of a Chartered Accountant including accounting, tax, payroll, statutory reporting, audit, treasury – the traditional finance stuff. However, the business is really crying out for you to apply your skills in other areas as a “real business partner”. This is great news, as you want to get away from the traditional finance stuff. But, I’m sorry to say, just wanting to be a real business partner probably won’t be enough. You will meet many challenges, the first of which is how you are going to work out what the business needs in terms of management information, and how to deliver it. Management information Management information isn’t codified in the same manner as IFRS, for example. There will be resistance to change, turf wars and egos to deal with. You will be asking yourself from the outset why you should even bother to push the boulder uphill, as often nobody in management – not even the financial director – expects anything from you other than the traditional finance stuff. Almost everyone in the business will agree that there are problems, but nobody will have found any realistic alternatives. Staff at the sharp end – the ones who deal with the problems and deficiencies on a daily basis – often have pragmatic and costeffective ideas that could solve these problems, but no-one listens to them. Strangely, management may not even understand the concept of management information. In my experience, they tend not to trust the numbers and are therefore free to make unconstrained decisions. Furthermore, despite having the hierarchical position and control over budgets to make change happen, management doesn’t always follow through in this regard. I once had a quotation hanging on my office wall, possibly attributed to Henry Ford. It said: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” My then financial director looked at it and said, in all seriousness, “That’s good – so we shouldn’t change anything, right?” What the business needs Outside of the traditional finance stuff, you will likely find the following situations in your business, which will reliably point to where you will need to act: Everything is done in Excel: I’ve been using Excel forever and still regularly find exciting new functions, but when did you last understand a colleague’s spreadsheet file? Unfortunately, we all use Excel in individualistic and unstructured ways. Multiply this across the whole business and you have ‘Excel hell’ – a serious waste of time caused by everyone “tapping in” the same or similar data, and yet more waste when you have to reconcile the various versions. The problem is getting worse as the capacity of Excel continues to increase. You will need to consider: • How to reorganise the information and processes to reduce the total number of www.accountancyireland.ie
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VOLUME 49 NUMBER 2 APRIL 2017 Diver
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Comment 3 President’s comment Apr
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Contents 5 Spotlight 30 Pay gap, or
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News 7 Enhancing audit quality anch
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Est 1887 News 9 UCD and PwC promote
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When you fly Aer Lingus, you‘re c
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Annual Dinner 13 Gillian Doherty, C
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Comment 15 Brian Keegan An uncharit
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Comment 17 Write it down Des Peelo
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Comment 19 Emotion: the spoiler Ann
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Interview 21 Serving the public goo
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Retirement Planning... You have lot
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Diversity 25 Diversity... is it goo
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Diversity 27 fact that diversity an
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LONGBOAT ANALYTICS WINNER FINANCIAL
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Mandatory Electronic Filing is fast
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Page 37 and 38: Diversity 37 The road to inclusion
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Page 43 and 44: Audit 43 insights for stakeholders
Page 45 and 46: TALK TO TOMORROW’S ACCOUNTANTS TO
Page 47 and 48: Financial Reporting 47 financial re
Page 49 and 50: LEADING PROFESSIONAL PUBLISHING
Page 51 and 52: Restructuring Trends 51 The 2016 re
Page 53 and 54: Restructuring Trends 53 insolvency
Page 55 and 56: Audit Quality 55 should be written
Page 57 and 58: Tax 57 BRASS TAX Current developmen
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Page 61 and 62: Tax 61 Furthermore there was no rea
Page 63 and 64: Tax 63 Tax deadlines David Fennell
Page 65 and 66: Professional Standards 65 Consent O
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Page 69 and 70: Membership 69 Quigley, Keith Rice,
Page 71 and 72: Innovation 71 The strategy of innov
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Page 75 and 76: Leadership & Management 75 UK acade
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Page 79 and 80: Leadership & Management 79 Whistlin
Page 81 and 82: Commercial Feature 81 www.liquidati
Page 83: Commercial Feature 83 the high leve
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Page 90 and 91: 90 Careers The hard case for soft s
Page 92 and 93: 92 Careers job can add an entirely
Page 94 and 95: THE SPECIALIST GOVERNANCE RECRUITME
Page 96 and 97: EXCELLENCE IN FINANCIAL RECRUITMENT
Page 98 and 99: 98 Member Profile A new orbit From
Page 100: NETWORK Building a strong network i
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Diversity

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