Crossover Performance Measurement – Strategy Understanding 

A distressed packaging corporation focused the turnaround strategy on the improvement of the cash position. An increase in „collections from customers“ was a key improvement lever.

The sales staff translated „collections from customers“ into „increase sales“ and did not fully understand the cash impact of their deals since payment terms, payment behavior and working capital effects were handled in the office of the CFO/ controlling.

Only after the order confirmations were sent out and the orders were scheduled for production and paper board was purchased, we realized the negative impact on the cash position in our liquidity planning.

Although we had a clear focus in our strategy and alignment among management, we underestimated the need to ensure that the executing individuals have understood the full set of implications it had to their own job every day.

We have consequentially started to assess the strategy understanding in each business unit and function as well as the possession of basic financial skills among all key people to ensure that „cash“ is a top of mind awareness though out the organization.

Byproduct: We recognized that a lot of operational specialists proposed a set of very good ideas to improve the cash position beyond the actions that were included in the restructuring plan.