Kevin Briggs

Having worked as a senior interim over a number of years, I have a wide range of skills that can be applied in different circumstances. Since each role requires different degrees of skillset mix, it is difficult to be prescriptive about what I can bring to a organisation without an outline of the case beforehand. However, the case studies examine my application of key financial skills required in those circumstances. When these skills are considered against the management skills that are demanded, the matrix becomes a complex mix, an indication of which is shown in this summary.

The financial skills that I use can be summarised under three main headings:

• strategic
• commercial
• financial

Strategic

Generally, either the role is part of a strategic option that an organisation has taken (such as an acquisition) or it involves a major initiative that is important for the future development of the organisation (such as raising funds). These include:

• managing change in either business integration or IT implementation environments
• raising funds from either the capital markets or retail markets (including invoice factoring and discounting)
• identifying resources and capabilities and mapping these onto organisational product offerings
• customer and competitor strategic analysis
• in change management environments, providing the visioning and leadership that is required where staff are uncertain of future outcomes
• applying techniques styled on the balanced scorecard for performance measurement

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Commercial

• implement credit management policies and procedures, including credit checking and insurance
• customer and supplier terms negotiation, including where, for example, US GAAP impacts on commercial contracts
• financial analysis & planning
• cashflow forecasting
• preparing business cases for marketing opportunities and development expenditure and providing bid support. This needs the additional skill of providing clear and reliable business modelling in Excel
• customer profitability analysis

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Financial

• product and sales area profitability analysis and overhead behaviour
• management reporting and KPI's
• financial modelling
• activity-based costing and budgeting
• financial reporting and getting through difficult audits
• company secretarial support
• ensuring that organisations' tax positions are not compromised and that full advantage is taken of all tax opportunities

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Further details of my financial skills are provided on the page for basic financial skills. As referred to above, I have prepared a summary to map these skills onto the roles that I have completed as a one stop shop.