with John Doris, Meridian Business Advisors

John Doris B.Sc. M.B.A. F.C.C.A. is principal of Meridian Business Advisors Limited and he is a non-executive director of a number of companies across a range of sectors. In 1989, he joined ABN Amro Corporate Finance, the corporate finance wing of ABN Amro Stockbrokers, where he managed the very successful Riada BES Fund. In 1998, he set up his corporate finance and strategy consultancy business, Meridian Business Advisors, where he advises a wide range of clients.

Topic

Accountants often do excellent work in preparing accounts but fail to do themselves justice by giving a poor presentation of the results to management and/or the board. They work hard to establish the level of profits or losses and then consider that the job is done. They neglect to put adequate work into presenting the results.
The accounts presented often mirror the format used in statutory reporting and the information is not presented in a way that shows trends or helps the board and management to make decisions or deal with the issues that they face. Sometimes very important information gets buried in a morass of detail.
This lecture considers the needs of management and boards and then considers how financial information should be tailored to meet these needs. It urges accountants to treat management and the board as an internal customer and to tailor reporting in line with the needs of this customer; i.e to shift from a production orientation to a customer orientation. The lecture looks at the need to ‘package’ information, so that the important issues are highlighted and understood. It also suggests some potential reporting formats.