In-house Workshops

We have successfully moved to a three day reporting regime which has resulted in positive comments being received from the senior management team. This would not have been achievable without the assistance from David. Our team enjoyed the workshop that David facilitated to discuss and review our existing processes. It provided the team with an opportunity to look at the end of month process in its entirety and, with some guidance from David, we were able to eliminate some steps and improve alignment with others. The result, a full CFO report, ready by COB day three. An awesome result.
Lloyd Petty, Acting Chief Financial Officer, Civil Aviation Safety Authority, Canberra

Lean Accounting

A big “Thank you” for the Lean accounting course you presented this week. I thoroughly enjoyed the day and cannot wait to become leaner and more efficient. I will definitely be on the lookout for any other training you might be giving again in Sydney.
Mark Schild, Group Management Accountant, Rubik Financial Limited
I attended the recent NZICA Lean Accounting Course in Wellington and wanted to let you know that I was quite inspired by the course and have instituted a few of the ideas.

At St Matthew in the City in Auckland, we report financials to our Vestry (governing body) quarterly, and for the June quarter just ended I was able to get the results finalised within 4 days. (compared with around 20 previously). A big part of this was a change in thinking to be “nearly right” rather than waiting for every document to come through. My accruals will be more accurate for the next quarter as I have a better idea what to expect now.

I presented the June quarter results at our meeting this week, and I also presented a Dashboard, based on your template. The Vestry members were very impressed, and it made explaining the accounts so much easier and clearer.

Thank you for the inspiration and encouragement to think a little differently. The Vestry is keen to adopt a more formal Annual Planning process, so I will put some of your ideas into that as well !

Thanks again

Winning Finance Teams

“Between my staff and I we have attended a number of your workshops over the years. Following one of your workshops a couple of my staff returned fired up agreeing with me that reporting month-end by day two could be done. We ran a post-it note session (as demonstrated in your workshop) and identified some month-end tasks that could be done earlier and some tasks that shouldn’t be done and were abandoned. We dropped back and from 12 days close-of to a day 5 close off (a couple of times we actually closed on day 3). We are now running another post-it workshop and staff are keen to introduce the new staff to the process and bring the close off back further to day 3. An important point here was that my staff ran the sessions which led to greater ownership.

We have also gone live with the Board A3 sheet, which summarises progress on one page and was featured in your workshop. The sheet is now a key document in the Board pack.”

Thanks for your guidance and teaching.

Phillip Igoe, Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Services Manager, Wallara Australia Ltd
“I attended the “Winning Finance teams” one day masterclass and have been able to totally revolutionize one of my clients’ board meetings by implementing the A3 board report from the NZICA workshop you ran in Tauranga! They got caught on details during the board meetings and never got into the real issues and use that time to strategize. The 8 pages of various charts now fit on the same page as the financials avoiding time wasting during the meeting as people used to lose track of which page others were talking about. It still gives me a buzz when I prepare this page every month.”
We attended David’s course on “winning Finance teams” and we have had instant success with our Flash report. My Accounting team managed to get the flash report for November completed by 4.00pm on the second day. They even reconciled most of the Balance Sheet Accounts and didn’t work any overtime. The workshop gave us the tools and the mindset to achieve this result.
Ron Milne, General Manager – Finance & Operations, Enware Australia Pty Limited

Quarterly Rolling Forecasting

“Thank you very much for your inspiring teachings on Quarterly Rolling Planning and Forecasting on Monday. I came home from the sessions and was feeling quite exhausted. I think it must have been due to the absorbing nature of the material and your delivery that had me totally engaged.

I am quite excited about the prospect of leading meaningful change in the planning processes where I work. I shall study the selling tips you gave and put these into action to give it a real shake.”

Jon de Jong, Finance Director, Karndean

Winning CFOs workshop (one day)

As a brand new CFO who has read many of the lean, lean accounting, and Jeremy Hope books, etc. I have to say you have done a great job. I have been evangelizing about things like the 1 day close, simple reporting, etc. etc. well before I began this new adventure of mine, but your book is unique in the way it shows clean practical examples of how to implement these ideas. I have not even read a fifth of the book yet, yet I have probably already begun implementing at least ¾ of what I have read. So yes I will implement, review and spread the word.
Greg Anderson, Chief Financial Officer, iGPS Logistics
The three main highlights for me from attending David Parmenter’s “winning CFO” were; David’s tight and punchy delivery style, access to soft copy templates to customise and implement in my organisation, and breakout sessions at the end of each section where you can discuss your thoughts with someone in a similar industry.
Amanda McPherson, Director of Finance, Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre
Thank you again for the excellent course. The three main highlights for us were having a dynamic and engaging speaker, a speaker who had an in-depth understanding of the challenges and solutions for Finance functions and how the content/delivery during the day was customized to maximise the benefit to the attendees.
Lisa Blundell, CFO, Birch & Waite Foods Pty Ltd
Thanks for the course. I found it very informative, useful and interesting. The three main highlights for me were; being introduced to a lot of good authors and good books, being given clear directions of reading and thinking in Finance teams better practices, and the broad extent of the course from people management to actual leading best practice.
Joyce Yang,Management Accountant, Pepper Homeloans

Below you will find a list of testimonials from workshop attendees and readers of  David’s books.
For Keynote Addresses at Conference – Testimonials Click here

Attending half day workshops  ( including quick month-end courses)

Hi David,

I recently attended the above workshop that you gave for CPA in Perth on 21 June and I just wanted to give you an update.

Our group consists of our head company and five subsidiaries based in South Korea,Dubai,Indonesia,Italy and the UK and with the exception of the UK entity all accounting is managed by our head office here in Perth. Up until a month ago the head company was locally owned and managed by two MDs.

Now the entire group has now been sold to an American Group through it’s UK entities. As a result we are now required to report monthly to the UK. Previously we were (if we were lucky) managing to finalise end of month by the 15th of the month (i.e. day 11 – give or take) so you can imagine our reaction when we were advised that management reports needed to be submitted to the UK by day 5. Not possible…or so we thought.

After attending your workshop you will be pleased to know that I (with the assistance of my team) have managed to complete June end of month for all 6 entities and handed them to my CFO (so he can prepare what he needs to do) by day 3 and a half. Didn’t quite make the day 3 deadline but had we not had auditors in the office for the last week and a half then I think we would have made it. I’m still happy with what we have achieved.

So I just wanted to say a big thanks! The impossible now seems possible.

Kind regards.

Melissa O’Brien, Accountant, MRC SPF Pty Ltd
Hi David,

It’s been a week since my first seminar with you on Quick Month End and we had just finished sharing a pint in the Square Pig afterwards. However my head is still filled with the many quotes and ideas learnt on the day and the subsequent seminar on Thursday (20 major mistakes).

Firstly I wanted to thank you for kindly sharing your time after both seminars and offering me the chance for some straight talking over a beer with you. Secondly I wanted to thank you further for your kind gesture when you gave me the Jim Collins book “Good to Great”. I’m not much of a reader but on the train journey back I dived straight into it and with the help of your inspiring comment inscribed in the front I have finished it already. I have lent it to my colleague (also) Paul and I am now seeking the next book to engage with.

The whole week has been one of the most uplifting and inspiring weeks in my working life. I now have more confidence and believe that improvements can be made to my workplace and more selfishly to my working practices.

Many thanks once again for your knowledge, passion and inspiration.

Best regards

Hi David

I attended your seminar in Christchurch on May 20 and have had great success in implementing changes to my reporting to the CEO and Board.

I was providing the Board with a monthly finance report 7 working days after month close down but after viewing your video online have reduced that to 5 and am working toward 3. We have also completely changed the format of our report, using more summarised information and graphs than we did before. Our Board were blown away and find the report so much easier to understand and use.

Archer runs a 55 bed rest home, and 2 retirement villages. I am looking at the rolling forecast now although that really is a challenge to my conservative accounting brain! Its like being told to try writing left handed! But, my boss wants me to look at it so that’s what we are doing.

The thing that made the difference from all you said was giving me permission to kill a few sacred cows, for example, I remember you asking us why do we have to make a month closedown as accurate as a yearly close down? I had never thought about that but of course you don’t, and that has allowed me to shorten up my end of month procedure times significantly.

I have bought 2 of your books and am finding them excellent reading.

Thanks very much for your help, its been great!

Kind regards,

ANTONY NIHONIHO ACA OPERATIONS MANAGER
Hi David,

I was fortunate enough to attend the ‘Quick month end’ workshop you presented at the Toyota National Accountants Conference 2011 in April and would like to provide you with some feedback.

Admittedly, after your opening statement, in which you stated that you would show us how to report by work day 3, I had to restrain an urge to throw something at you J.

Your presentation had a profound affect on the way I approached a month end, not only was it engaging and enlightening but it was relevant and most changes could be actioned immediately.

As a result, I returned to work after the conference with a renewed sense of purpose, immediately won Director support and subsequently transformed our reporting timeframe around from workday 10-11 to day 2 within 1 week!!

Before writing to you I wanted to be sure that our new process was airtight and that I would be able to continue to achieve this going forward. I’m happy to advise that once again in May, both our factory reporting and board reporting was submitted on workday 2. I now honestly feel that workday 3 reporting would be worst case scenario for us but that this would now be considered a disappointment to my team – a significant change to our previous mindset!

I was going to summarise the aspects of your presentation that had the greatest impact on the way we do things now but, as most businesses are different either structurally, procedurally or both, it would serve no real purpose as it is important that your workshop content remains unchanged. All businesses stand to benefit from the philosophies and principles that your workshop contains and although many may only be able to implement 80-90% of your suggestions, if it enables them to achieve workday 3 it is a win for both parties.

As it turns out, I’m now a ‘reformed month ender’ and now positively don’t want to throw anything at you! Instead, I sincerely thank you for your insightful and necessarily blunt approach.

I have since recommended you at every opportunity and will continue to follow your website updates with interest.

I look forward to the prospect of attending another of your presentations in the future.

Thanks again,

Sheila Melton,Accountant, Airport Toyota
Hi David,
We attended the CPA training sessions you presented in Townsville a couple of weeks ago. Just wanted to let you know that we decided to implement the quick month-end by day three reporting process. We delivered the February month end reports by mid-day on day two!! We normally deliver by day 10 to 12.
We have now set a precedent which we intend to continue to deliver. Next step is the streamlining of the reports.
Cheers,
Colin Barnes, Chief Financial Officer, GS1 Australia

David Parmenter’s Whitepaper’s

Dear David

The paper has arrived. I am quite amazed on the potential usefulness in very practical – hands on – way of all the tools you’ve given me to build, or to run business a lot better in my case. I just need to go through all of them and let them sink in my head to identify the most suitable tools and best way to apply in our business and the sector.

I will keep you updated with my progress on that… I have no doubt this will have longer term benefit for not only the organization I am working for, our sector as we are a peak body organization and more importantly for me personally as well. Allow me also state I do respect your, time, knowledge and hard work put in to these materials and your intellectual property is safe with me.

Thank you David.

Joe Zaw Maung CPA І MBA (Finance) І M. Prof. Accounting І B.V.Sc, Business Manager, AMSANT Inc.

David Parmenter’s Books and Articles

Dear Mr. Parmenter,

I am reading your KPI (second ed.) and I really enjoy it. I work in the ICT and Business consulting sector, focused mostly in Italy and Europe and I find the book a real step forward with respect to the literature of “balance score cards” which had never fully satisfied me.

In my experience (primarily with very large enterprise companies), this kind of approach is often frowned upon both by top management with a “yes but we have other priprities right now…” and by the middle management as if it were an “impossible task”. Actually there is no explicit and rational explanation to that of course if not “baloney”.

I am more curious in this last point. Have you developed a checklist in order to profile the companies or departments which are most likely to engage is taking KPI and measurement really seriously?

Thank you for your kind attention and consideration

Best Regards

Filippo Zanella
Dear David,Greetings!!I wanted to convey my utmost appreciation for your Learnings published in “Leadership Excellence”, a Journal of Leadership Development (India Edition) on “Crisis Leadership”.Honestly it did touch the chords of my mind. I feel really proud to see you at this height of this thinking. It is now established that genuine determination and tenacity are the right weapons to reach your target through such writings. I truly appreciate your dedication and hard work, in the valuable role you played to write such a wonderful article for next generation leaders.I have also gone through your website www.davidparmenter.com and let me tell you it is fabulous. I love to know more about your book “Key Performance Indicators” and “Pareto’s 80/20 Rule for Corporate Accountants”.
Hello David,

May I introduce myself – my name is Emily Coltman, I’m a Chartered Accountant and have not long made the move from practice to industry (Finance and Operations Manager for a small company).

That means making sure I learn about areas such as the Balanced Scorecard and KPIs.

I finished reading your book “Key Performance Indicators” today and I have found it very helpful indeed. It explains the distinction between KRIs and KPIs clearly, is written in plain English, and has given me a great deal of food for thought on how to identify our organisation’s CSFs and track KRIs for the board and KPIs for internal management. I shall go back to the office tomorrow with a head full of ideas!

Many thanks for writing such a great book and if you have any recommendations for further reading material apart from the ones you mention in your book, I would be very glad to hear them.

Kind regards,

Hello David,

I just wanted to thank you for yesterday’s course in Wellington.
I thought your presentation was brilliant and I look forward to applying some of your methodologies in the future.

Thanks again.
Kind regards,

Nikki Johnston Assistant Accountant, Helicopters NZ Ltd, Private Bag 9, Nelson, New Zealand
Implementing a quick month-end at a finance company

We were a finance team which had been through so much change and fire fighting that we were struggling to maintain order and priorities around the month-end process, and as a result we were the textbook case of 2 weeks + to get any reporting out, and the board pack was the classic “insert this month’s numbers into last month’s text”.

Post the course, which we thoroughly enjoyed, we immediately began to implement: booking the post-it note workshop within a few days. We sought and got complete buy-in from our CFO and, through her, our CEO. Our CFO also attended the opener of the post-it note workshop. We did the post-it note exactly as prescribed, as in my judgement it would not work unless implemented as an entire package. I’ve previously done a fair bit of course writing, change management, instructing and facilitating, and think that it is a really well thought out approach.

We made 3 days on the first month-end (inc. “no spring cleaning” mantra). The second month end was quicker again, as we’d re-engineered the board pack and created a flash-report, very similar to your template. CEO loves it. We get the flash out on day 1, 5pm ideally, and the whole board within 3 days if we’re fully staffed. We’ve benefited from the extra time in the month, and month-end is far from a drama. Post-it note re-engineering worked a dream, and I’ll carry it with me from now on; not just for finance month-ends, but any reworking of processes.

Jonathan Ayres, Head of Finance
Hi David
I recently attended your “Quick month-End Reporting” through CIMA and although somewhat skeptical on the day, I thought you would be interested in some feed back on what was achieved in month one.

Our reporting timetable was somewhat flexible and figures tended to be prepared for BPG (Business Planning Group) 3rd Wednesday of the Month and Board last Wednesday of the month.

We currently do not have a Purchase Ordering system so a degree of accuracy has had to be sacrificed, but the first month after your session we produced figured for day1. Today (day2) final accruals has been completed and I’m in the process of writing the Board report.

Regards

Sue Ambrose, Financial Accountant, W. Jordan (Cereals) Ltd
Good Morning David

Dominic and I thought we would let you know that we achieved our month end in less than 3 days! Following our attendance at your inspiring two days of presentations we went away convinced we could achieve it here at Blenheim Palace.

We told our team on Monday 28th April and closed the ledgers on Wednesday 30th, quite a tight deadline for the team but they rose to the challenge and succeeded!

Management accounts were finalised on Friday 2nd with the CEO reports being completed the same day. We feel very proud to have produced accurate accounts in this time frame and it really has inspired and motivated us to make many of the improvements you have suggested. We look forward to improving our processes and making further efficiencies within our Finance team.

Many thanks for your inspiration, we now have the library of all your books so I am sure there are more new challenges ahead for us.

CFO Blenheim Place
David,

Just a quick note to let you know we have finalised our accounts & board report in four days.

In the past this has taken any thing between 13 to 15 days, due to my complete lack of urgency & complacency.

Thanks for the wakeup call & demystifying the process.

Kind regards,

Peter Walters, Chief Financial Officer, Broome International Airport Pty Ltd
Hi David,
I attended your Pareto 80-20 course (now called top twenty mistakes corporate accountants make) with CPA Australia on 9th August and returned to the office with a “we could do that” perspective in regard to closing in 3 or 4 days of the end of month. After putting together a “how could this happen” email, senior management agreed to the changes.

September month end was the first opportunity to try it out. Result: Figures finalised 1:30pm day 4. This compares to a good result previously being in the 10 day area. Thanks for the insights. FYI, we are a SME with 30 employees and turnover of about $16m.

Bryce Armstrong
David,

Thank you for your excellent presentations in our two day in-house conference.

All of the teams gained some invaluable insight (including our economists) to the various topics.

The troops are primed, share the vision and we are planning our changes.

An outstanding success.

Regards,

John Knox, Chief Finance Officer, ActewAGL and TransACT
Hi David, thanks again for the course on Thursday afternoon regarding quarterly rolling forecasts, which has given me an insight not just about forecasting but also re constantly questioning what I’m currently doing and re-engineering a number of processes I currently undertake.

As I said, ‘This course was the most practical session I have ever attended’.

Cheers and I look forward to catching more of your sessions,

Greg Forck, Budget Director, Department for Victorian Communities
Decision Based Reporting
Very passionate about topic – great presentation skills
Great examples given – very practical session
Victoria Hubbard
Decision Based Reporting
Very inspiring & motivating speaker who offers some revolutionary ideas
Could not believe how relevant the content was.
Sam Faulkner