COMMERCIAL FINANCE

Use your accounting skills as an in-house consultant, advising businesses on strategies for growth.

Overview

While general accounting and audit work is typically about analysing an organisation’s financial performance after the fact, commercial finance is about proactively pushing for financial growth.

Commercial finance managers actively analyse the performance of a company’s products or services and then make recommendations to maximise profits. Depending on their expertise or the business’s goals, they might focus on either a specific product or service area, or offer broader strategic advice for the whole business.

This type of work is more commonly found in fast-moving industries (e.g. banking, retail, fast-moving consumer goods, oil and gas, manufacturing, tourism, etc.) where external market factors or high volumes of transactions can have a notable impact on a business’s profitability day-by-day.

Career Pathways

In general, commercial finance work is less concerned with bookkeeping and more focused on setting and implementing financial controls and processes. These ensure that non-finance functions such as sales, marketing, and production streamline their expenses and make well-informed business decisions.

Commercial finance managers may also monitor and recommend price adjustments for a product or service, which involves finding a balance between attracting consumers and making a sufficient profit. Their other responsibilities could include tracking sales performances against targets and highlighting variances for immediate follow-up, forecasting changes to future profits, and assisting non-finance staff with developing new products and promotions.

Graduates keen on commercial finance roles typically start off doing general accounting or audit work to gain experience in analysing businesses and persuading stakeholders to make necessary changes. After obtaining a professional qualification, they may then choose to pivot towards commercial finance work – whether full-time or as a greater share of their existing responsibilities.

Some employers do run specific training programmes to gear graduates towards this line of work. Within such programmes you can expect to be given a fair amount of responsibility from the get-go, such as advising on financial controls or providing appropriate data and advice to help colleagues make key business decisions.

Commercial finance opportunities can be found within an organisation’s internal finance team, with public accounting firms like the Big Four, or with management consultancy firms. While some companies do employ dedicated commercial finance managers, others may just embed commercial finance functions within other roles in their internal finance teams instead.

Required Skills

Work in this area often comes with plenty of pressure since the recommendations you make will have a direct impact on a business’s profitability. One such example is that you may be tasked with generating and analysing daily sales and finance reports to aid management decisions. Having effective time management skills and multi-tasking abilities is critically important if you want to succeed.

Constant awareness of an organisation’s business direction as well as broader marketplace trends is vital. Excellent communication, teamwork and presentation skills are also necessary since you will be spending a lot of time making recommendations to management, communicating processes to nonfinance colleagues, or working with other finance team members to come up with a collective analysis of the current situation.

Your analytical and problem-solving skills must be on point as well. Commercial finance managers are often required to come up with quick, effective solutions in response to sudden changes, market movements, or emergencies. You’ll need to be able to think on your feet while still retaining an eye for detail.

With that said, commercial finance professionals can expect to gain a deep understanding of the business world and the various functions that make an organisation tick through the course of their work. Experience in this line of work is key to advancing to more senior management roles such as financial controller or CFO… or maybe even into CEO positions as well!