I recently had a mid-year review and one of the things I put down is that most of my work comes from month-end close activities and I'd like to start doing more project-based worked. My manager and I talked yesterday and she tasked me with figuring out my own special projects outside of month-end close. This is great news because I get to choose what I do. However, I don't know what to do...it's not the first time I've thought about this, but it's hard for me to figure out a project to work on. Does anyone have a resource they can send my way?
Background of finance department: We have FP&A, Tax, and Accounting. We also have treasury (2ppl). I am on accounting as the general ledger/staff accountant. There are two more of me, a more senior accountant, a manager, a technical manager, consolidations guy, equity guy, a couple payroll, and controller.
Here are 10 ideas for you
Having some experience in a financial analyst role, here are some ideas.
Guiding principles:
-look for projects where the end result can be easily quantified (e.g. $1000 dollars saved)
-what bothers the boss? (e.g. is one of the month-end procedures particularly painful? Turn look for a way to turn this into a project)
-relationship potential of the project: look for opportunities to work with one person outside your department.
Ideas:
1 - Get payments processed faster (i.e. if payments normally hit the company's accounts on the 15th, see if you can move that up to the 5th. That means more $$ and financial flexibility for the company)
2- Automate a process using Visual Basic (assumption: Microsoft Excel is in wide use and there are many manual processes)
3-Improve quality for a critical process (choose a way to measure quality, measure the quality in the current state, put in improvements and then measure again).
4-Write a procedures document for one of your recurring activities (in the process of writing the document, you may find ways to cut steps or make improvements. Having such a document on hand makes it FAR easier to train people in the future)
5-Ask a co-worker for cross training on one of their activities and take the effort to set up the work (i.e. schedule sessions, take notes etc) - learning what other people can add clarity to your own work
6-Build a financial model that has never be done before (e.g. let's say you have a vendor that sells $5 million worth of product to your company, you can build a model to monitor this spend. This model can then be used to aid in your department's financial forecasting and planning)
7-Organize a social event for your department (yeah, I know it sounds simple but is anybody actually doing it? I suggest starting by organizing a lunch out at a nearby restaurant).
8-Fix a long standing problem that other departments complain about (e.g. otften, managers outside the financial function complain that finance is tough to work with. Determine if there is a pattern to the compliants - you may be able to make a project that makes their life easier like providing templates or a "finance checklist" for other managers to use).
9-Fix an internal audit problem or observation. Assuming your department is audited by internal and/or external auditors, you may have an opportunity. Auditor reports often include a list of problems - ask to see a copy of the report and see if you can make a project out of that (this helps make the boss look good and achieve a "clean audit")
10-Propose ways to save money for the company. There are plenty of ways to do this. Use the financial data that you have at your disposal. For example, can you get your company a better deal on office supplies? Look at the top 5 categories of spending and see what you can do to make cuts. Write up a short proposal (i.e. 1-2 pages) and discuss it with the boss.
Other ideas:
Check out my article: http://www.projectmanage.com/the-starter-project-where-new-project-prof…
And my website: http://projectmanagementhacks.com