I’ve yet to experience an ordinary year during my tenure with Viridian; whether it be rapid growth in our business offering or building our internal finance muscle, each year has brought new opportunities that help develop all sorts of resilience.
Post our acquisition of parts of the BT Financial Advice business in FY20, and the strength testing of COVID over the last 18 months, our business is now taking advantage of its internal capability sets more than ever. Strengthening strategic goals and continuously looking at how we can improve internally ensures that the strength of our team is one of, if not the biggest, influences of our future success.
While we build our teams with business as usual (BAU) in mind, there is no doubt that we truly gauge the talent and resilience of those team members during these most challenging times.
The Viridian finance team supports two key components of Viridian’s growth and development through providing:
- Sound control over numbers, all the way from a quote to reporting to our board and shareholders in an annual report, and
- A consistent focus on how we can use our financial position to achieve our goals.
I would not be effective in my role, to service our decision makers with quality information to enable success, without Rie Maki and James Atkinson. Rie’s Finance and Operations team steward the rigorous financial controls of Viridian, and these controls allow James Atkinson and the Corporate Finance team to drive towards achieving our goals. As such, my success in my role is defined by the success of our finance team in their roles and it is the sum of Viridian’s parts that deliver on our purpose.
While each year turns out differently to what was predicted, the strength of our capabilities now ensures that I can look forward with confidence.
Within the finance team our focus list continues to develop, currently including:
- Exploring employee ownership options to further encourage one of our key goals – winning as a team, and
- Developing a new suite of finance programs and modelling tools to support Viridian’s growth and development.
So, while I know now never to expect an ordinary year, with BAU likely now a figment of all the imagination, this uncertainty now breeds excitement for FY22 and beyond.
Abigail Barnard is Chief Financial Officer at Viridian Advisory.
This post and some supporting materials may be regarded as general advice. That is, your personal objectives, needs or financial situations were not taken into account when preparing this information. Accordingly, you should consider the appropriateness of any general advice we may have given you, having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs before acting on it. Where the information relates to a particular financial product, you should obtain and consider the relevant product disclosure statement before making any decision to purchase that financial product. The material in this post is correct and complete as of the data it was posted. Viridian is not responsible for, and expressly disclaims all liability for, damages of any kind arising out of use, reference to, or reliance on any information contained within this site.