Controlling

Controlling for Effective Management

Controlling is a core discipline of effective, forward-looking management. It supports the planning and steering of performance, helps safeguard liquidity, and lays the foundation for sustainable business success.

Bringing together conceptual clarity and practical application, this book introduces the core areas of operational and strategic controlling and demonstrates their use in managerial decision-making through worked examples, exercises, and case studies.

Its main areas of focus are:

• Understanding the role of controllers as business partners in the management process.
• The accounting foundations of controlling: financial accounting, cost (management) accounting, and ratio systems.
• Steering companies, profit centers, and cost centers with budgets, budget/actual comparisons, forecasts, and KPIs.
• Preparing integrated financial plans (income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow).
• Designing clear, decision-oriented management reports and interactive dashboards.
• Increasing the efficiency of the finance function through digitalization, automation, and data-driven decision-making.
• Developing and evaluating strategies and investments with multi-year and scenario planning.
• Implementing strategy with the Balanced Scorecard and increasing agility with methods such as Scrum and OKR.

Designed primarily for bachelor’s and master’s students in English-taught, internationally oriented programs, it also offers practitioners a clear and up-to-date introduction to controlling.