ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the core activities regarding the finance professional's contribution to performance management and examines what characterises successful finance departments. Finance professionals work at every hierarchical level and, apart from working in the finance department, are often embedded in other functions while maintaining a reporting line to the CFO. Key performance measures and targets play an integral part in focusing managerial attention, analysing and evaluating performance, and thereby allocating incentives as part of the variable pay in reward systems. Effective finance professionals will have highly developed analytical skills obtained through both classroom learning and experience of carrying out various forms of analyses throughout their careers. Collaboration between finance professionals and managers is more likely if finance demonstrates customer orientation. Marketing research has shed many lights on the importance of customer orientation, both for the supplier to ensure future demand and for the customer to gain optimally designed products.
