EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
LEE HOWITT , DIRECTOR OF FINANCE AND HR AT CHECKPRINT , A MEMBER OF THE TALL GROUP OF COMPANIES
quickly to enable the business to reengineer its cost base , support the reduced activity and still be profitable . Costs in the organisation came under greater scrutiny and , as a result , many established processes and procedures were updated .
Financial planning has always had its challenges and understandably the pandemic has made this even harder for organisations . Budgeting for the TALL Group became a real problem as most models rely on historic data trends to form the basis of any future results – the pandemic changed all of this and analysis of current trends and day-to-day key performance indicators became critical to the budgeting process , with reliance on market info and the best estimate of recovery times .
Accounting departments are used to accuracy , consistency and relatively predictable planning cycles , not the unknown economic conditions of a global pandemic . Forecasting over longer periods is now almost impossible due to the ever-changing business landscape and is limited to the next 12 months to give a reasonable degree of accuracy .
Companies ’ existing plans and assumptions will need to be revised when planning for the year ahead with regards to the rapidly changing global health situation , which is creating uneven economic effects across all industries .
Conventional strategic thinking doesn ’ t seem to be an option anymore and it seems that the best advice comes from a hybrid approach , combining traditional business strategy with the latest research findings .
THE BEST ADVICE COMES FROM A HYBRID APPROACH , COMBINING TRADITIONAL BUSINESS STRATEGY WITH THE LATEST RESEARCH FINDINGS .
Debt management , while always a constant high priority within any business , became much more of a focus during the pandemic with all debts under scrutiny to assess the risk of bad debt . However , as a result of this focus , we have seen very little bad debt during the last two years of the pandemic .
Access to grants , such as the furlough scheme , was very helpful to the business and allowed us to ride out the worst of the pandemic whilst keeping the majority of staff employed during the time .
Strategic decisions , that had been under consideration for some years , were acted upon
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