Winning CFOs: Implementing and Applying Better Practices, with Website

CHAPTER 10

Client Management: Improving Relationships with Budget Holders

The accounting teams need to focus much more on client management. Too much time is spent sitting behind a desk instead of scoring goals in front of managers and the senior management team (SMT). Accountants need to be business advisors first.

Here are some ways you can improve your relationships with budget holders:

• Give them new insights into their operations.
• Include trend information (rolling 15- or 24-month graphs) and key performance indicators in the reporting.
• Talk through the monthly results with them—they might not understand the reports.
• Provide training sessions for budget holders’ staff.
• Introduce a new cost-saving initiative each month.
• Help budget holders with their new reforecast—you can expand your team temporarily for this purpose.
• Help budget holders with bringing forward projects.
• Run a satisfaction survey on your in-house customers and implement the recommendations.
• Give a bottle of wine to the first budget holder to submit a correct monthly return.

Perform an In-House Customer Satisfaction Survey

Initially once a year and then twice a year, run a statistically based sample survey on your in-house customers. Send the survey set out in Appendix K. The key features are:

• Ask two open-ended questions that will generate most of the benefit of the survey: “What are the three things we do well?” and “What are the three things we can improve on?” Never ask about the problems, as half of them will not be ...