Posts Tagged ‘projects’
Financial Managers to financially manage projects – who needs them!
As more and more businesses seek to reduce costs – one area that is a likely candidate is that of the financial staff supporting projects of work.
As centralisation and outsourcing continues to be a key driver in cost reduction in many large firms, what is often cut is what is seen as the “non-adding” value staff. The issue arises is that these staff are usually the ones who are out of site of the head finance managers, work numerous hours on assisting in the delivery of projects and yet are not really seen by the “latest” re-organisation as adding value. They will insist that a light-touch financial management from a central finance function will do just as well.
The Project Financial Accountant or Financial Manager is one such staff member. Before I launch to the project accountants defence it has to be noted that having the wrong finance manager in charge of project financial matters is as good as having nobody and therefore is “no value added”, and should go. The problem is that senior management has either little care or little knowledge about what it is like to correctly financially manage a large programme of work. They consider their FX manager – controls £250m worth of foreign exchange in the year – we only need one of him or her, so why for a £50m programme of work do we need a full time accountant. Possibly you don’t – however that is another debate for another day – you will at least need part of one!!!