Product Description

Praise for The Manager's Guide to Financial Statement Analysis

"The Manager's Guide to Financial Statement Analysis opens the door for both financial and nonfinancial managers to develop a framework for understanding a company's true financial performance. The Manager's Guide goes the extra step by providing the reader with the skills necessary to communicate the impact of a firm's financial measures in a nontraditional, easy-to-understand manner. It is this combination of understanding and effective communication that allows the manager to then improve a firm through the use of financial information."-Christopher D. Flick, Investment Manager, The Vanguard Group

"The Manager's Guide to Financial Statement Analysis has helped me in both my personal (investing) and professional (management) lives. The authors unravel the complexities of financial statements so that the information they contain can be easily digested and exploited. There is no more hiding a company's strategy behind a set of financial statements. I keep this book close at hand!"-Steven I. Glusman, Chief Engineer, Comanche Helicopter Program, Boeing Rotorcraft Program Management Center

"A valuable framework for communicating firm results and aligning managers around common goals. The methodology links the information contained in a company's financial statements with its external market performance in a format that is easily understandable by the different functional managers of any company."-Scott Teeter, The LTC Group

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #723630 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Review
"...its great strength is that it simplifies the crucial determinants of company performance without drowning the reader in accounting jargon." (Company Accountant, April 2002)

From the Publisher
This book helps managers understand and use financial information to improve the financial performance of their corporation. It puts technical issues in the background and concentrates on helping managers understand the financial information provided in balance sheets and income statements, as well as the information gathered from other sections of the annual report, The Wall Street Journal, Value Line and Business Week.

From the Inside Flap
Every day managers are flooded with financial information from an over-whelming number of sources–company reports, the financial press, and the Internet. While the language of financial statements may sound like a foreign tongue to you, you know you can’t ignore it. To understand how to use financial information to improve the performance of your company, you need a resource that emphasizes how financial statements support meaningful management communications.

Written in accessible, nontechnical language, The Manager’s Guide to Financial Statement Analysis puts the focus on what you need to know to be an effective participant in business communications. Here is a frame-work that helps managers see how business strategy is linked to shareholder accountability through the firm’s financial statements–without getting caught in the trap of explaining how financial statements are prepared according to technical accounting rules and regulations. The emphasis of this book is on how you, as a manager, can use financial information to improve the performance of your organization, rather than simply learning how to keep score!

Using a full decade of financial data from Wal-Mart, and case studies of a number of other high-profile firms including Cisco, Dell, and Pfizer, this book presents strategy models that demonstrate how financial information can be utilized to tell a story about a company’s business operations. The Manager’s Guide to Financial Statement Analysis is written in language you can understand–the language of business as spoken by managers, not accountants or financial analysts. This book will give you the tools you need to unleash the full communication potential of your company’s financial information, make you a better manager–and make your company more competitive.

Customer Reviews

A real mixed bag
By "manager," the authors appear to mean "someone who is not financially literate." Although this book does a good job of explaining how to analyze financial statements, I was disappointed that it didn't really contain a practical manager's perspective. Instead, this book is just like many others -- it does a credible job from an academic perspective of explaining financial statements and their use. Don't expect to learn much about applying this to your job as a manager or as a small business professional.

Chart your way to positively impact your company's value.
This is an ingenious guide to understanding not only the key concepts of financial statement analyis, but also the levers at the disposal of managers which they can and should employ to proactively improve shareholder value in their firm. The charting methodology the authors have designed is not difficult, but it is nonetheless quite illustrative and well structured. I am using the book to teach a class of forty MBA students from many different countries, and I have found that each chapter fits into a one and a half hour lecture and discussion session very comfortably. From the students' feedback as well as my own background as a former Chief Financial Officer, I am certain that this book will be a valuable tool in any reader's management career.

Helped develop an excellent financial foundation for non-fin
"The Manager's Guide to Financial Statement Analysis" helped develop an excellent financial foundation for me, as a non-financial professional. Reading it wasn't about getting the math correct, it was about telling the story of a company through careful analysis of a company's financial statements. Where once I glided over dollar amounts and percentages, I now read and understand where they come from and what they represent. Since most professionals are responsible for budgets and are likely to be stakeholders in some business or another, it is imperative to have a broad based understanding of financial statement analysis, this is where The Manager's Guide fits in.