Strategic Financial Control

Most systems of financial control have a strategic and a tactical aspect. Financial control is being strategic when it is thinking about the operation as a whole. A system of tactical control can help correct and inform the strategic financial thinking of the operation. Reinforcing either the candle-ends or seat-of-the-pants methods by more rigorous methods of financial appraisal will first affect the tactical financial control. A major breakthrough towards investment appraisal as a method of corporate financial control occurs when projects start to be looked at on a sample basis, the presumption being that in general all projects should be appraised in this manner, even though only some are looked at. Thus one would have moved away from a system which is fragmented, like the traditional candle-ends and seat-of-the-pants systems from which it would have developed, to one which is strategic and not tactical.