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Fig 9.
CoŶtrollers’ ŵaiŶ activities
Planning and budgeting is considered as the activity with the highest added value in 2015, increasing strongly (+3 pts)
whereas working with operational staff is seen as less strategic (-2 pts), just like performing business reviews (-2 pts)
or working with IT (-2 pts).
Fig. 10 Time spent and value of activities in 2015
When considering the time spent by activity and the declared resulting added value, we observe that the time spent
correlates well with the added value, and controllers organize their time depending on recognized priorities. Fine-
tuning the results shows the following:
•
Planning and budgeting is a highly strategic activity and takes a good chunk of time
Variance analysis, forecasting, working with operational staff, and to a lesser extent, performing business
reviews are activities for which both the added value and the time spent are at medium level and remain well
balanced.
•
Conversely, reporting seems to be the activity with room for organizational enhancement since the sense of
added value, said to be average on that activity, and the proportion of time spent on it, said to be too high, are
unbalanced.
•
Finally, internal auditing constitutes a challenge for controllers who increasingly give it added value but are
still spending too little time on this activity. Working with IT appears to be in the same category; this issue will be
developed in the Tools section of this report.
16%
17%
13%
14%
11%
12%
8%
9%
Reporting production
Plan & budget
Variance analysis
Forecasts and Re-
forecasts
Business reviews
Working with operational
dpts
IT systems
Internal audit / Risk
management
0% 10% 20%
2014
2015
Working with
operational dpts
Variance analysis
Forecasts and Re-
forecasts
Plan & budget
Reporting
production
IT systems
Internal audit / Risk
management
8%
13%
18%
8%
13%
18%
Spending time
Added Value
2015
IAFEI Quarterly | Special Issue | 14