FINANCIAL PLANNING AND CONTROL: A KEY TO MANAGEMENT EFFICIENCY

A CASE STUDY OF NIGERIA BREWERIES NINTH MILE CORNER ENUGU

ABSTRACT

The reasons for the study emanated from the fact that poor financial control system has always been an impediment to the growth of some business organizations. They have always faced the problem of poor cash and material control system of which this study has addressed it self to. The problem of how stocks and cash should be held in order to have a healthy financial environment and operations and the maintenance of an efficient inventory management some of the organizations.

The problem of stock management revolves on the determination of the optional stock levels. Besides, efficiency financial control measures and staff efficiency to which this work will address itself to, counts to the problems faced by some organizations like brewery. I have to make some useful suggestions and recommendations based on that which the company and other similar organizations will adopt to achieve results.

This study will be a guide to scholars, researcher or writers who may wish to carry further study on the financial management of the company. This study focuses on the examination of the existing financial control system in Brewery and also to investigate the present system of cost control and material management as indicated above

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

In fact, this word is so dynamic in nature and only thing that is permanent on earth is change. Therefore, people have to put in an adequate financial planning and control in other to withstand the challenges of the future. A business cannot be statistic. It has already been noted that business has to be changing which requires an adequate balance and cash flow for it to go forward or backward but not to be stagnate. Thus, for the business to expand, there must be adequate financial resources.

More so, no business can grow unless proper accounting, marketing, personal, financial and so on are fully staffed with good spirited individuals. The efficiency and effectiveness of any organization be it small, medium or large scale enterprise, depends on their finance, planning, control, and management financial planning and control therefore, enables a firm to monitor its financial environment including attitudes of investors so that it can optimize the benefit of planning from the environment. Systematic and adequate planning will therefore ensure the availability of the amount desired of the business time.

It may be very pertinent to note that financial capital is the major resources of any organization. The financial managers function are as follows:

Raising of funds to finance projects.

Employment of their funds in a liable projects.

Management of the cash flow arising from more projects.

Return of funds to their funding.

In a nut shell, the duty of a financial manager is to implement the acquisition, allocation and management of these resources. Moreover, planning and control are the essence of project planning and act as a device that enables management to anticipate change and adapts to it. No business can thrive without some terms of this outstanding twin concepts and success in business is proportional to its planning and the skill with which it is controlled. Accounting to Lemka and Edward (1977), “financial planning and control can therefore be said to be said to be the name given to a system which is being used to increase overall management efficiency”. It is concerned with planning for the allocation of resources to assist in achieving the objectives of efficiency of both large and small scale organizations.

Also with reference to Compsey and Brigham (1985), “financial management involves planning for, acquiring and utilizing funds in a way that minimizes, the efficiency and value of the firm”. Therefore, Enugu State Agricultural Development program (ENADEP) being my case study is not left out in the financial planning and control which constitute the following:

Cash management

Project execution

Effective costing and control of all inputs used by Agriculture Extension Agent.

Acquiring of necessary items for official use, to ensure improved performance of the organization.
Furthermore, as the term Agriculture implies the cultivation of croups for food to man and animal, rearing of animal and other livestock, and production of raw materials for our industries, ENADEP as an organization acts as an extension agents that creates out step by step method of impacting on the farmers to cultivate good seeds on a good land in other to have a bumper harvest. ENADEP also teach the farmers how to sell their crops in other to make profit and how to store their crops to avoid wastage of the scarce resources using the available storage facilities. Thus, all this line of actions are archived using financial planning and control involves ensuring that there are always enough fund available to avoid default on payment of depts.

Consequently, financial planning and control also entails the normal checks and balances carried out by management to ensure security of asset to protect against theft, manipulation and fraud. Hence, from my reasoning, I deducted that financial planning is a process of protecting all foreseeable future events, verifying the consequences of present decisions, analyzing the intentions and interactions of the financing and investment choices open to the firms and understanding the link between the present and future decisions and thus, helps ENADEP as an organization to achieve and allocate resources in other to attain its objectives in a predetermined way fulfil its organizational policies.

The organization measures its efficiency through project implementation by utilizing budgeting as its main financial planning tool. With reference to ENADEP News letter Magazine (December 2008), captioned Rising prices of food items in the country and the need to Corp them written by pat Chibuoke Onyia, he noted that the nation can feel secure in the faced of a threat of famine arising from serious food insecurity. Although Nigeria is still far from famine but the current food satiation is bad enough to give everyone some concern. Therefore, the government has to finance well, plan well and control well in other to inject money into agriculture and equally train the farmers using the Agriculture extension agents to improve food production in Nigeria and equally raise the standard of living of the farmers and masses at large.

It could be deducted that unless everybody joins hand to produce enough food that is to say if all the table bodies young men and women no matter his or her status should adopt a self help method of “operation feed yourself” to the sustain the vast population, the price of the product will just be so much high and the government’s good plan towards agricultural will run into a serious witch.