Our European understanding of controlling is in demand worldwide

“We enable performance excellence” is our mission as CA controller akademie. In other words, we make an important contribution to ensuring that our customers are successful! We are firmly convinced that good controlling, operated with a uniform understanding of controlling in all areas and across all companies, is essential for the success and future security of a company.

That is why we take our controlling philosophy out into the world and ensure that it is properly understood and practiced. We support internationally operating organizations in developing their corporate management and controlling in a targeted manner across national borders and placing it on a stable foundation.

When we provide training and consulting services within companies around the world, we find time and again that our European understanding of controlling is in demand, precisely because it differs in key respects from the international, particularly Anglo-Saxon and US, understanding of controlling. The differences relate to the role, tasks, organization and self-image of controllers. After all, our term “controlling” (a German invention) already implies the word ‘steering’, unlike the international term “management accounting”.

An international comparison clearly shows that:

• we see the controller not only as a financial planning and analysis manager, but also as a business partner and sparring partner for management.
• our controlling, as a process of target setting, planning and management, is more comprehensive and future-oriented than mere reporting and retrospective analysis.
• our cost accounting (e.g. contribution margin accounting, flexible marginal costing …) has significantly more depth of detail.
• we focus more on integrated management systems than on individual financial indicators.
• Controlling is generally an important independent area of our companies and not just part of financial accounting.

Internationally, for example, I also regularly conduct controlling seminars for Knauf worldwide. The last controlling seminar took place in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). Controllers, managers, specialists and executives from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Colombia took part. The aim of this training: to establish a common understanding of controlling in companies worldwide and to strengthen the role of the controller as a business partner (with specialist knowledge, methods and social skills).

🙏 At this point: Many thanks, dear Knauf team, for our great collaboration and for the fantastic film you made about it!

A common understanding of responsibilities, roles and cooperation as well as standardized procedures, tools and methods are therefore decisive success factors when companies operate internationally. Knauf is aware of this.

Anyone who is also faced with the challenge of establishing an internationally uniform understanding of controlling in the company – please contact me.