How can you improve your financial management with feedback?

?? Consider stakeholder feedback for refining financial strategies and improving financial health. ?? Analyze Stakeholder Expectations Understand their satisfaction levels and align decisions with their interests for a sustainable business model. ?? Effective Feedback Integration Develop a systematic approach to incorporate stakeholder feedback into financial planning regularly. ?? Measure Impact Quantify how feedback affects financial metrics to enhance financial management's effectiveness. ?? Leveraging stakeholder feedback is essential for strategic financial management. It enables organizations to align their financial decisions with stakeholder interests, ensuring long-term sustainability and success.

This is not even a feedback question, but how pro-actively one can manage the interest of stakeholders well to balance these. During all of these interactions, that should be a key component of negotiation. Many don't even evaluate these aspects, for example at employment negotiations as hiring managers (for many reasons that should not be in place, but that's too long to discuss here). Then they are surprised that they can't get what they need.

In my experience and also being a novice in reding financial statements , you should have just the skill of diagnosis like in theory of constraints and like a hawk uncover the biggest problems . as an example in a retail firm i saw that there was no matric of profitability inventory rati and this i used it across many firms to help in determining the acuteness of the cash flow issue and help in fixing it .The full details would merit a lecture but this was a hack i continue to use .(its purely a mindset/heartbeat issue and if you are determined you can get the one key metric which is needed for turning around firms without boiling the ocean )

In general reading the financial reports and analysis should be accompanied with the functional metrics and their results. These combined will always tell you when and where something off, well before cash flow issues should arise, or to take it from the other end, to know if your performance is in line with the business activity and expectations (or if your expectations were incorrect to start with, especially in case of startups).

Feedback from budgeting is very insightful, especially when you are doing it for the first time. It provides you with hindsight to assess how you viewed your business and its key drivers. Even better, it helps you understand the assumptions you take in quantifying your budgets. Comparing this with your actuals is a brilliant post mortem exercise and recommended for all business owners. No better feedback and really humbling as well, trust me!

Audits are not fun. But rather than going through an audit how you would go through a colon exam, think of it as a strong learning opportunity. The auditor might think his job is to only to highlight the issues at hand but smart managers push them to answer the why and the how? Key Actions post Audit: - Document the results - Set a KPI framework to measure future performance - Make sure you have a person held responsible for those KPIs - Decide your review timeline at the time of the audit results itself.

Benchmarking is one of my favorite ways to get feedback. If you have "enough" right data points, the benchmarking exercise will really force you to look at your business in how the market is looking at your industry in general. Case in Point: A logistics client was very proud of his on-time deliveries % but that number had become tables stakes and it was cost per order that was the KPI which powered sales conversions. Benchmarking helped him understand that he needs to measure what matters to the client.

Financial numbers can often seem abstract, but when anchored in the real world, they come alive. - "Fantastic progress! At this rate, we'll need to expand to the upper floor by the end of 2024." This not only highlights growth but also gives a visual goal. - "We're facing a hurdle! Without an increase in clients by Q2, we might have to consider downsizing our office space." This connects financial targets to physical outcomes, making the urgency and the stakes clear. By linking financial figures to concrete, everyday scenarios, you ensure that these numbers resonate equally across your team. This method transforms abstract data into meaningful stories, fostering better understanding and engagement in financial management.

Financial management improvement through feedback includes soliciting of stakeholder input, analyzing financial performance, and readjusting the strategies. Feedback loops regularly help to highlight what needs to improve, make decisions more effective and ensure that financial decisions are consistent with the company’s objectives. Using this repetitive process supports progressive improvement, the ability to adjust to change and a stronger financial management structure.

As others have highlighted already, never do any financial analysis L'art pour L'art. Always link back to what the business is doing. Then it is well worth the time. I'd anchor back financial management into every function in the business as it is so critical to be done in context. It can be generally with the FIN department, but the responsibility of the context-based management should be with the functional heads, not like what many companies are doing by taking these away.