Exploring Strategic Financial Management

Exploring Strategic Financial Management is the second text to be published in the Johnson/Scholes Exploring Corporate Strategy series.

This book expands on the financial aspects and implications covered in the main text, Exploring Corporate Strategy by Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes. The emphasis throughout the book is on the links between corporate strategy and financial strategy. The book can be used as a stand-alone text, or to complement Exploring Corporate Strategy by providing comprehensive coverage of its main topics.

• complements Exploring Corporate Strategy by Johnson and Scholes
• approaches financial strategy in the context of broader corporate stragey
• includes cases and exercises
  

• Part 1: Introduction
  1. Introducing strategic financial management
     1. Introduction
     2. Strategic analysis
     3. Strategic choice
     4. Strategy implementation
     5. Strategy, value and learning
     6. Structure of the book
     7. Key questions
• Part 2: Value analysis
  2. Managing strategy for value
     1. Introduction
     2. Shareholder value analysis
        1. Value and cost drivers
        2. Avoiding value destruction
        3. Linking value and cost drivers with critical success factors
        4. Understanding the cost of capital
        5. Understanding the significance of shareholder value
        6. The hunt for value — guiding principles
     3. Ways of linking strategy and value
        1. Strategic environment
        2. Business scope
        3. Competitive positioning
        4. Internal competitive advantage
     4. Exploring the business value system
        1. The scope of the business value system
        2. The customer perspective is our starting point
        3. Motivators and hygiene factors drive value
        4. Value creation is often a non-linear process
        5. Value creation does not necessarily mean value capture
        6. Business value systems may need to migrate
     5. Conclusion
     6. Key questions
  3. Strategic management accounting
     1. Introduction
     2. Strategic management accounting — a framework
     3. What business are we in?
     4. Life-cycle analysis
        1. Life-cycle effects and strategic management accounting
        2. Life-cycle effects and financial strategy
     5. The impact of competitive advantage on the value drivers
     6. Identifying performance improvements
     7. Evaluating business and financial performance
        1. Root cause (fishbone) analysis
        2. Performance driver analysis
     8. Strategic management accounting reports
     9. Break-even, contribution and value analysis
        1. Break-even analysis
        2. Contribution analysis
     10. Conclusion
     11. Key questions
  4. Strategic financial accounting
     1. Introduction
     2. Annual reports and financial accounts
     3. Conclusion
     4. Key questions
• Part 3: Strategic and financial development
  5. Strategic investment decisons
     1. Introduction
     2. The strategic investment decision process — an overview
     3. States in evaluating strategic investment decisions
        1. Definition
        2. Options for defining the project
        3. Targeting and collecting data
        4. Evaluating the assumptions
        5. Analysing the importance and uncertainty (of assumptions)
        6. Understanding the dynamics of uncertainty
        7. Exploring the 'do-nothing' or base case
        8. Intangibles and interdependencies
        9. The Dyson breakthrough — and defining the business case
     4. Conclusion
     5. Key questions
  6. Strategy, acquisitions and value
     1. Introduction
     2. Acquisition strategy and objectives
        1. Acquisition objectives
        2. Value segmentation — introducing the "Three V's"
     3. The search process — and acquisition criteria
     4. The deal
        1. Pricing the deal
        2. The negotiating process
        3. Lessons for the divesting company
     5. Acquisotion integrating and learning
        1. Integration and value creation and destruction
        2. Surfacing acquisition investment — the iceberg model
     6. Key lessons from Granada and Forte
     7. Conclusion
     8. Key questions
  7. Strategic cost management
     1. Introduction
     2. Cost — a strategic management perspective
        1. The experience curve
        2. Cost leadership strategies
        3. Differentiation
        4. Competitor's costs — analysis
        5. The value chain and core competences
        6. A Summary
     3. A financial management perspective on costs
        1. Activity based costing
        2. Micro analysis of cost drivers
        3. Cost programmes as strategic investment decisions
        4. Cost structure analysis
     4. An operations management perspective on costs
        1. Quality management
        2. Customer service
     5. Organisational change
        1. Organisational analysis
        2. How might strategic change be valued?
     6. The strategic cost management process
        1. The key phases of strategic cost management
        2. Issue definition
        3. Diagnosing of issues
        4. Creating challenging options
        5. Evaluating and planning
        6. Implementation
     7. Conclusion
• Part 4: Implementing strategic financial management
  8. Review and conclusions
     1. Introduction
     2. Strategic financial management — a summary
     3. Checklists for strategic financial management
        1. Managing for value
        2. Strategic management accounting
        3. Strategic financial accounting
        4. Strategic investment decisions
        5. Acquisitions
        6. Strategic cost management
     4. Final conclusion

A very good try to add financial measures into the Johnson & Scholes universum. I liked, but it had virtually nothing on Risk Management, which was a bit surprising.

Anyway, a decent book and worth reading to see how certain strategic decisions may be backed up by hard financial ones.