Hello and welcome to Business 300. My name is Philip Kulenshov and this is 300

seconds about business. We're all a busy people so I have five minutes or less to get my point across.

There's no time for fluff here.

We're talking about business finance adding value to the customers and the business, instead of detracting from it.

I have four value ads that should come out of finance.

In the last episode, I mentioned the first two, data and analysis. Data is things like transactions and financial statement accounts.

Think revenue and expense logs.

A more detailed explanation of what composes those accounts, think product type and labor categories,

and productivity metrics.

Think quantity, quality, and timing.

Data collection can be endless, so it's important

to understand which decisions you're after and collect the data that is relevant. Analysis,

the second value add, is turning the data into information by making connections. You've taken

measurements, but what does it mean? How do the metrics relate to the KPIs? It's not just about

collecting relevant

data, but also having relevant analysis. And this brings us to the third value ad,

Insight. With the data collected and turned into information through analysis, now the job of

finance is to deliver insight. What's the story that this information is telling? What are the trends, conclusions,

and likely scenarios? If we keep going at this rate, this is what will happen. Yes, nobody's a

fortune teller, but based on their data-driven analysis, finance people should be able to have

more reliable predictions. It's work to dissect and understand the condition of the business,

especially if the business is larger and more complex. Based on our sales volume, product mix, and the cycle time of

...