Philip Campbell's Blog

Thoughts About Forecasting, Business, and Money

In my book A Quick Start Guide to Financial Forecasting, I included a fun chapter at the end titled Thoughts About Forecasting, Business, and Money.

I included some of my favorite quotes from fourteen great books about the overall subject of business and money.

Here are some quotes from one of the books I included in that chapter:

From The Six-Month Fix by Gary Sutton

“The function of a business is to create money, not consume it, and the longer you postpone this the harder it gets to fix.”

“Bankers cannot make more than a few percentage points on the money loaned, but they can lose it all. That’s why they’re jumpy. They make more money by avoiding losses than by getting new clients. Help them relax by getting them familiar with your business.”

“Receivables are viewed as nothing more than test market expenses until they are paid. There is no sale assumed, no customer satisfaction believed, and no commission paid until the money arrives.”

“Converting Controllers to CFOs is…tough. The skills are the same but the personality is different, and even the Mayo Clinic isn’t performing personality transplants just yet. Controllers set budgets, squeeze dollars, and control. CFOs sell forecasts. One sells the outside world. The other squeezes internally.”

Excellent advice from a guy that has turned a lot of businesses around in his career.

 

NOTE: My new book is available at Amazon. Learn more here.

A Quick Start Guide to Financial Forecasting: Discover the Secret to Driving Growth, Profitability, and Cash Flow Higher provides a straightforward, easy-to-understand guide to one of the most powerful financial tools in business: a reliable financial forecast. It will transform the financial future of your company and help you make better, faster, smarter business decisions. Order the book at Amazon. Or learn more here.

Putting Some WOW in Your Financial Dashboards

This picture shows what my face looked like when I discovered the new breed of Business Intelligence (BI) tools that are now available for creating powerful, automated financial dashboards. 😊

I saw the magic the first time I laid my eyes on Power BI. (Power BI is not the only tool out there for creating cool dashboards… it’s just the one I fell in love with).

Dashboards have become my go-to tool for turning data and numbers into insight and financial improvement in a company.

Getting Attention Matters

One thing I have learned over the years is that the most effective dashboards are the ones that grab a CEO by the collar and scream out for their attention (in a nice way).

When you put a dashboard in front of the CEO or a business owner, you want them to say “Holy Cow. WOW! This is awesome. I love this. Now I get it. Now I understand what you have been trying to tell me over the last two years. Now I know exactly what we need to do to improve our financial results”.

The good news is that the tools are available today that make it so much easier to create dashboards that are fun. It is easier than ever before to create dashboards and visual insights that are cool and that get attention… and lead to action.

Driving Financial Improvement

To me, working on making a larger and larger impact on an organization is fun. I absolutely love the challenge of turning data into insight. It helps make my work fun and enjoyable. It helps me make a larger and larger impact. 

Sometimes you have to create a whack on the side of the head to get attention… and ultimately drive the action that can help create a bigger and brighter financial future for the business.

Interactive dashboards are becoming the ideal tool to help you make that happen.

Click here to see an interactive dashboard a company uses to help them monitor the metrics that matter in their business.

The dashboard is interactive, so you can play with it.

Check it out real quick (there is also a short video there where I show you how the dashboard works). 

 

NOTE: My new book is available at Amazon. Learn more here.

A Quick Start Guide to Financial Forecasting: Discover the Secret to Driving Growth, Profitability, and Cash Flow Higher provides a straightforward, easy-to-understand guide to one of the most powerful financial tools in business: a reliable financial forecast. It will transform the financial future of your company and help you make better, faster, smarter business decisions. Order the book at Amazon. Or learn more here.

I Will Be Speaking at the CFO Controllers Conference in Fort Worth in March 2018

I will be speaking at the CFO Controllers Conference in Fort Worth, Texas on March 28,2018.

I’ll be talking about how to use data to create visual insights that turn numbers into better business decisions across an organization. I will demonstrate specific examples of cool interactive dashboards.

I will show the power that is becoming available in today’s Business Intelligence (BI) tools to help us create visually powerful dashboards. And I will make many of those examples available for download after the session.

The conference is put on by the Fort Worth Chapter of the Texas Society of CPAs and will be held at The Riley Center, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 8:30 am - 4:30 pm.

Presentations include:

• Business Intelligence: Using Data to Create Visual Insights - Philip Campbell, CPA
• Accounting for Leases - Brad Jay, CPA Weaver
• Healthcare Market Trends - Mindy Jones Pyxis Care Management
• The Toyota Story - Anthony Salcido Toyota North America
• A Discussion with the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas - Robert Kaplan, with Lei Testa, CPA
• Managing Receivables - Cara Kennemer Underwood Law Firm
• Cyber Breach Insurance - Regan E. Katz Wortham, L.L.C.
• Tax: The New Frontier - Jonathan C. Gee, CPA Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP

You can learn more about the conference or register here.

I would love the opportunity to meet you at the conference. 😊

 

NOTE: My new book is available at Amazon. Learn more here.

A Quick Start Guide to Financial Forecasting: Discover the Secret to Driving Growth, Profitability, and Cash Flow Higher provides a straightforward, easy-to-understand guide to one of the most powerful financial tools in business: a reliable financial forecast. It will transform the financial future of your company and help you make better, faster, smarter business decisions. Order the book at Amazon. Or learn more here.