FINANCIAL CONTROLLER CENTER

The Effective Controller in the 21st Century
Accounting Strategies for Business Management: Thailand Business Cases

Yanyong Thammatucharee

SYNOPSIS

In this groundbreaking book, Yanyong introduces long-term based management strategies to help businesses to achieve long lasting successes from an accounting perspective. The ControllerFOCUS model is used to explain the insights of a total company’s intensified management capability. This performance driven tool involves everyone from every function within an organisation. Several real-life examples and practical suggestions are included throughout this book.

PRESS RELEASE

Accounting your way to Business Success

When Controller’s FOCUS, business can only boom.

Neatly organised, condensed, and packed full of useful tips, YanyongThammatucharee’s The Effective Controller challenges the stigmas of monotony and tediousness attached to the accounting world. We are thrown into a world of strategy, crisis control and organization, where it is hard to keep up. Thammatucharee offers a solution, the ControllerFOCUS model, a line of attack that was created out of twenty years of accounting experience, to assist Controllers in every aspect of their work.

The ControllerFOCUS model highlights five key strategies that aim to increase the effectiveness of the Controller, improve the successes of the company, ensuring its survival in an ever changing world. Thammatucharee five strategies include: Looking to Future Prospects, Understanding Business Operations, Ensuring the Control Effectiveness, Utilizing the Corporate Resources and System Continuous Improvement.

Thammatucharee displays a real situation into which these five key strategies are put into practice. The author paints an in depth picture of the thoughts and mindset of a Controller that has entered a company on the brink of crisis. Based on his own real life experiences, some sections take their form as a diary.

Working in a manufacturing company in Thailand, Thammachuree must set up a new accounting team, strengthen the internal control system, and improve upon the company’s high operating losses. In The Effective Controller not only does he develop a new exciting concept, but he enables us to see it in working action. We are delivered humble and honest accounts of the problems that Controllers face, but in accordance are given practical and genuine solutions and secrets to success.

The Effective Controller relates to every member of the accounting team, offering useful tips to junior auditors and accountants. Every aspect is discussed, from the importance of team work to the satisfaction of individual goals. Thammatucharee’s wealth of experience will enable the Controllers out there to develop a wealth of their own, as long as they FOCUS their way to success.

BOOK REVIEW

The Effective Controller is a clear and concise motivational manual that aims to increase our understanding about the importance of the Controller in the balance of a company performance. Under the guidance of the author, we discover the ControllerFOCUS model, according to which the Controller’s focus should be divided equally between five key concepts: future prospects, operation, control, utilisation and system improvement. What Thamatucharee successfully does is create a ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ of an effective controller and ‘In’s and Out’s’ of the accounting world in unison. The Effective Controller, though assuming that the reader has some basic accounting knowledge, does reinforce a stable foundation of essential principles, preventing any feeling of being left out in the cold. Not only does Thammatucharee provide sound advice to company Controllers but also to every functional body of the accounting department. Offering helpful tips to new graduates on how to get onto the accounting ladder and providing guidance to Controllers on their first day, Thammatucharee displays a keen insight into the accounting world, as well as a genuine interest in helping those that lack his experience.
The Effective Controller is easily followed with examples of how to organise the Chart of Account and Operation Focus Evaluation in an effective and operational way. It also offers a step by step breakdown of the accounting department terms and practices, as well as almost every functional role that you will meet in the accounting. Based on Thammatucharee’s own experiences gathered over 20 years of working in the accounting world, holding various accounting positions from Plant Controller to Account Manager, it is definitely undeniable that wisdom and know-how breathe through every page of this book. This humble and knowledgeable manual highlights the importance of an effective internal control system for the survival of a company. When new business rules are given birth it is vital for a company to create and follow new business processes. In this sense, The Effective Controller proves to be a true guide for the 21st century.

The collapse of many financial firms and the recent failure of the controlling capability of several authoritative bodies has shown to us that a new standard of controllership is seriously needed. We have to figure out a new solution to these persistent problems.

The old ways of controlling have already lost relevance. We are going to face with the business environment that anything can be out of control fast. It is possible that we should consider radical changes to the traditional business practices including financial regulations, competitive management, and ACCOUNTING output.

The accounting roles in those failed companies have to be reviewed.

* Why can’t stakeholders rely on the accounting and auditor’s reports?

* Why can’t we hear the warning loud enough to stop the damages before they become too large?

The measuring of the business successes also needs to be changed. We cannot keep using the double-entry accounting concept forever because it has proved for many times that it is outdated. It focuses on the past too much. It is vulnerable to manipulation. And there is no real independence existing in the organization. All these clearly point to the need for a new advanced techniques to tackle the emerging of new kinds of business troubles.

What could we have done if we could go back and re-started with a new set of business rules?

Please wait for a new concept to be proposed…..

Yanyong Thammatucharee
19 December 2008