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LEARNING RESOURCE
play a key role by teaming up with
business partners to create balanced
personal scorecards for individual
employees and teams that are focused on MBAexpress: Key Concepts of Business Strategy
the critical performance measures they
can affect. Whether you are an entrepreneur or want competitive insight into
Achievement of these targets should your market, this course prepares you to successfully launch a global
then serve as the basis for incentive business with innovation, risk management, masterful marketing, and
compensation. sustainable practices.

6. Track performance COURSE
Design dashboards to track and monitor
actual performance vis-à-vis plans. From
time to time, iterate those dashboards
and improve them in consultation with
users and key stakeholders, based on
evolving requirements. in the right direction and to spot trends emerging competition, evolving
These dashboards must also cover and risks. There’s no need to know a customer expectations, or new
reporting whether all the key strategic project initiative will cost $79,225. An regulations coming into force. In short,
activities are adequately resourced. estimated cost of $75,000 to $85,000 is periodic reviews of the strategy can
sufficient. So don’t spend time boiling help determine if underperformance
7. Share key performance insights the ocean. was the result of a bad market
Regularly report insights to the assessment, a wrong strategy, or poor
implementing managers, to their teams, 9. Watch out for reasons to revise execution.
and to the executive leadership, based on the strategy
financial performance and operating Effective implementation requires A continuous process
performance — ideally one set of regular evaluation of the strategy, by (1) As you consider the nine steps,
numbers throughout the organisation to reviewing the internal and external remember that strategic thinking and
avoid varying assumptions by the teams. factors affecting the implementation of execution don’t happen on a linear
By understanding how well individual the strategy; (2) measuring performance; timescale. Good strategic thinkers
business units perform, managers can and (3) taking corrective steps to make think about how the execution would
identify areas for improvement. the strategy more effective. play out even as they are formulating
For example, let’s say that your High-performing organisations are strategy. They then plan for execution
organisation’s strategic goal is to agile both in course-correcting on the iteratively as they draw up the strategic
improve its customer retention by 33% strategy itself as well as in shifting plans and translate those into
by the end of 2023. You can set up resource allocation as the business actionable goals.
dashboards to monitor any change in the needs evolve, in order to ensure Finance professionals can and must
customer retention rate weekly or successful execution of the strategy. play a crucial role in supporting
monthly. If your reports show that your An important capability that finance strategy execution. Devoting time and
customer retention rate is decreasing teams must develop is rolling effort to hone their strategic thinking
month-on-month, it could signal that forecasting/budgeting, such that and implementation skills will allow
your strategic plan requires pivoting changes in resource allocation and them to build a more fulfilling career
because it’s not driving the change you investments can be made in a timely in finance, help their organisations
desire. If, however, your data shows manner instead of waiting for the next make well-informed strategic plans,
steady growth, you can use that trend to annual planning cycle. and implement the plans successfully
reasonably predict whether you’ll reach For example, if actual results to achieve organisational goals. n
your goal of a 33% increase by the end of continue to deviate significantly from
2023. goals and relevant KPIs and/or if there is
a major shake-up in the business
8. Continue to track performance environment, the finance team should Raju Venkataraman, FCMA, CGMA, is a
and share projections initiate an in-depth review and explore corporate trainer and credentialed
Set up periodic strategy implementation together with their business colleagues leadership and career coach (PCC)
review meetings and prepare for these whether (1) it is time for a course based in Singapore, serving clients
with financial simulation modelling, correction in strategy; (2) it is purely an worldwide. He is a former CFO and
forecast updates, and what-if analyses. execution issue fixable by changes in head of strategy of The Walt Disney
Unlike financial reporting and personnel or resources, etc.; or (3) the Company South East Asia. To comment
controlling, which go by exact numbers, aspirations were set at the wrong level on this article or to suggest an idea for
strategy implementation only requires and they need to be made more realistic. another article, contact Oliver Rowe at
numbers to be in the right ballpark to Examples of environment shake-ups Oliver.Rowe@aicpa-cima.com.
indicate whether the business is moving include acts by competitors or new,

FM-MAGAZINE.COM February 2023 I FM MAGAZINE I 25