Strategic and Corporate Governance

Strategic governance means strategic leadership. It encompasses the processes by which an organisation is managed at a strategic level. Central to strategic governance are the concepts of leadership, authority, accountability, transparency and stewardship.

Effective strategic governance will reduce the possibility of strategic irrelevance; it is essential to be attentive, nimble and to employ effective strategic governance practices.

Corporate governance complements strategic governance in ensuring that the organisation’s framework of Board and Executive leadership, membership and governance documents best suited to the ongoing strategic needs of the organisation, its employees and the people it serves.

Parbery can support you to mature your organisation to achieve greater strategic leadership through strategic and corporate governance improvements including:

• Ensure the board and management have a clearly articulated mission, vision and values and clarity in their purpose as an organisation.
• Review and/or develop a strategic plan that encompasses both the strategy to meet the organisation mandate and the supporting corporate functions to achieve that mandate.
• Develop clear business plans and action plans to support the goals and outcomes included in the strategic plan.
• Ensure clarity in performance objectives to focus leadership and accountability.
• Measure performance-based results.
• Ensure that board members understand their governance responsibilities as organisational leaders.

• Review or establish the governance structure for the organisation to ensure clear lines of accountability.
• Review or develop organisational policies and processes that support strategic governance.
• Review the organisation constitution and associated charters to ensure suitability to the organisation’s strategic objectives and best practice governance arrangements.
• Manage constitutional change process by identifying constitutional imperatives, engaging and consulting with members and facilitating voting processes.

Business Process Management

Business Process Management (BPM) is a disciplined approach to identify, design, execute, document, measure, monitor, and control both automated and non-automated business processes to achieve consistent, targeted results aligned with an organisation’s strategic goals. Any combination of methods used to manage an organisation’s business processes is BPM. Processes can be structured and repeatable or unstructured and variable. Though not required, enabling technologies are often used with BPM and can better support business as usual functions to ensure, among other things, consistent, compliant processes are followed, supporting information is easy to access, accountabilities and risks are clear and onboarding new staff is easier and quicker.

Parbery’s Business Process Management experts can help you:

• Review enabling technologies and recommend technologies to meet your needs.
• Understand and analyse the documented processes you have and those you need.
• Review processes and policies to ensure accuracy and compliance, with a focus on targeting guidance at the right level.
• Develop processes or policies for your organisation.
• Identify process improvement initiatives using a LEAN approach.
• Develop a top-down architecture for your business processes to ensure users can find the information they need.
• Identify and implement processes for workflow or those that could be automated.
• Digitise paper forms.

CFO Advisory and Financial Management

The FPO landscape is constantly evolving, with changing regulatory requirements, increased public scrutiny and financial sustainability all challenges to organisations in this sector. Successful organisations are those that can adapt to these challenges while staying true to their values. We know that although operating in this sector, sustainable profits or surpluses are essential to the long-term viability of your organisation and your capacity to invest in your staff and the people you support.

These nuanced challenges highlight the importance of a clear understanding of the sector and how it best operates. We know that FPOs cut across numerous industries and are diverse in their size and governance arrangements. Regardless of where they operate or how they are structured, the organisations that value integrity and transparency are the ones that are most successful.

Parbery is well positioned to support you toward strong financial viability with a range of financial services, including:

• CFO advisory.
• Establishing cost-effective approaches to improving performance and develop strategies for long-term growth.
• Internal and external audit services.
• Financial reporting services.
• Support to develop and implement a budget.
• Financial forecasting.
• Support to identify cost saving measures and ways to increase both income and profitability.
• Managing tax concessions and exemptions.
• Funding applications.
• Implementing more efficient and less resource intensive accounts processing and transactional services.

Human Resources – Strategic and Functional

Strategic Human Resource Management (HRM) is the practice of attracting, developing, rewarding, and retaining employees for the benefit of each employee and the organisation.

HR departments that practice strategic HRM, work and interact with other departments within an organisation to understand their goals and strategies and those of the organisation as a whole. Strategic HRM is seen as critical for organisational success.  Parbery can partner with you to realise that success by supporting you with a range of Strategic HRM functions including:

• HR strategy review, development and implementation.
• An efficiency and effectiveness review of your HR function and/or team.
• Targeted support for specific HR related functions.
• Providing Strategic HR advice when required including during times of organisational change, restructure and redundancies.
• HR compliance audit.
• Providing recruitment and onboarding services to ensure a streamlined and positive experience for new employees.
• Providing support for exit processes and conducting exit interviews as a neutral third party to better support continuous improvement.
• Undertaking a HR policy, procedure and process review and update or develop identified artefact gaps.
• Providing trainers to help you deliver quality in-house training.
• Performance management and termination.
• HR management systems implementation and training.

Systems and Applications

Running a successful organisation requires quality information management systems to process all the data and maintain records, both financial and organisational, that enable the organisation to operate efficiently. Effective and suitable information management systems lead to organised, efficient organisations that can make evidence-based decisions quickly and efficiently.

If you are like many organisations and have multiple systems that could or should be consolidated, outdated systems that need to be upgrade or retired, data problems related to accuracy and reliability that have slowed down your workflow or many other system-based challenges, we can help.

Parbery can support you to improve the way in which you utilise systems in your organisation in various ways, including:

• Review the systems you use and identify systems that can be consolidated to improve efficiency and save money on multiple systems.
• Identify opportunities for improved data integration between systems.
• Manage the upgrade of applications.
• Manage the retirement of applications and transition data to new or existing applications.
• Manage the implementation of new applications.
• Transition new or upgraded applications across the organisation, ensuring all employees have user-specific training to improve their efficiency, reduce errors and increase motivation with systems that make their job easier.
• Digitise paper files.

Audit preparation

An annual financial audit is a necessary activity for all FPOs. Comprehensive and structured preparation for your financial audit can save auditor time and money – a win-win for your organisation. In addition to savings with respect to your auditor, efficiencies can also be found in reducing the time involved in employees responding to auditor requests; and ensuring the collection of artefacts provided for each audit is available for the future (have you ever had trouble finding that elusive contract until you remember there is a copy with your audit file?).

Our team has been involved in the financial audit process, both as the client and as the auditor, and can establish effective audit preparation processes that make the annual audit as painless as possible, through:

• Collecting and electronically collating all artefacts the auditors may need.
• Providing you with an electronic resource for provision to auditors that includes all identified artefacts.
• Representing you during the audit to collect any additional materials so you can focus on BAU activities.
• Preparing you to respond to auditor sampling requirements, for example streamlining the collection of invoices or purchase orders.

Grants / Tenders

For many FPOs, externally funded projects or grants are an important income stream and enable an organisation to deliver on its mandate. Submitting a grant response or request for tender needs to demonstrate to the funding body that you are the best organisation for the job.

Parbery staff have extensive experience in multiple elements of the grants process, including:

• Development and submission of successful grants.
• Management of incoming grants and commissioning of services.
• Grant assessment management.

Through our experience at all stages in the grants process, we are ideally suited to providing fully informed and effective advisory services that improves your chances of a successful outcome, including:

• Development of grant submissions / tender responses.
  • We know what you should and should not include in your tender.
  • We know how to effectively communication the expertise of your business and the work you have done.
  • We take the time to understand your organisation and who you may be competing against.
  • We can clearly articulate your ability to deliver based on your skills and experience.
  • We can put together a value for money proposition.
  • We ensure your bid is fully compliant with requirements for the response.
  • We manage all deadlines associated with the submission process.
• Managing the contracts you have with funding bodies.
• Developing strategies to deliver against your submission while reducing unnecessary overhead.
• Develop tender content libraries to help with future submissions.

Business Development

The enduring challenge, faced by just about every FPO, is building ongoing, sustainable and diverse revenue sources. We know that an over-reliance on government income is both highly prevalent and a considerable risk, but establishing alternative income streams through fundraising, investment or services is difficult and often hard to do when dealing with business as usual.

The Parbery team, with vast expertise and varied experience, are ideally positioned to understand your business, identify opportunities and leverage new avenues to better resource your organisation so it can serve the community even more effectively. Our services include:

• Business planning, strategy and costing of services.
• Business case modelling.
• Resource planning, business transformation and establishment.

Facilitation

How do you bring people together to work towards a common goal? An experienced facilitator can bring people together to work in a collaborative way, moving toward a desired outcome.

An effective facilitation process can help people to identify their strengths so they can be utilised to achieve a common or agreed goal. It can provide the exploration of different perspectives and ideas to create unified solutions. It can support in transitioning people from individual to collective approaches, environments or cultures.

Parbery’s facilitators can help to:

• Know where you are going.
• Engage with the hearts and minds of others.
• Encourage contribution.
• Explore new ideas or differing viewpoints.
• Create breakthrough or ‘wow’ moments.
• Get ‘buy-in’ or commitment to action.
• Achieve results or expected outcomes.

Health Check

Parbery understands that organisations are well served by regularly assessing their operations and alignment with their strategic objectives and vision. Not always will there be a clear focus of any review, rather a general assessment of organisational performance and practices in the context of their current and future business needs. This is where a Parbery Health Check is a valuable service. Utilising Parbery’s extensive expertise and service offerings aligned to FPO business needs, we can provide a high-level assessment of key organisational business structures and processes, including finance, HR, governance, systems, customer and stakeholder engagement, and business sustainability.

Our NFP Health Check is an opportunity to utilise independent expertise to provide assurance that the organisation is well placed to face the challenges of tomorrow and to identify the opportunities for organisational self-improvement that will take your organisation to new levels of performance.