The Controller or Control Manager, found with increasing frequency on the organization chart of more advanced companies, is the business profile responsible for interpreting and evaluating the company’s activities.

It can be identified as the professional or specialized structure that conceives and designs, alongside with the entrepreneur, the management control system, acts as a coordinator of activities, and, finally, provides top management with the basic information on which to make decisions related to business life.

Recent events have emphasized the need for financial and strategic planning in SMEs, accompanied by the construction of tools and models measuring company performance to calibrate business choices.

Thus, an evolution of the role of the controller is looming, not only as an entity outside the company, but as a real temporary manager who is chosen and appointed by the shareholders, who shares entrepreneurial choices with management and who supports top management in business planning.

In Italian SMEs, planning and management control activities in the company are typically carried out by the directors, who, in 70 percent of cases, represent the same owner shareholders: this is certainly a limitation to the development of SMEs, which remain with a closed corporate governance within the family owner of the company.

The controller, from this point of view, can, on the other hand, bring important benefits to the company in which he or she operates: in fact, from what has been outlined in the introduction, it can be inferred that the figure of the controller has, by its very nature, both technical and managerial knowledge, as well as knowledge related to the market in which the company operates.

Therefore, the controller, inserted into the company’s organizational chart as a temporary manager, also takes charge of the executive part in order to realize “on the ground” the objectives agreed with the management.

In addition, as the name suggests, he or she is a true “time” manager, on the company’s payroll for a defined period: typically the assignment lasts for about a year, which is usually the appropriate time frame for introducing and implementing a comprehensive management control system in the company. For this reason, the controller/temporary manager will need to travel in person one or more days a week to the client company’s headquarters to become an active part of it.

The controller, therefore, possesses a set of cross-cutting skills ranging from knowledge of work processes and business organization, to accounting records, budgeting and analysis, to findings about financial requirements and techniques for forecasting, controlling and reporting.

In particular, the controller is familiar with:

• structures and work processes, related to business organization;
• methods for making accounting records, as well as for the preparation and analysis of financial statements;
• techniques for recording financial requirements;
• forecasting, control and reporting techniques.

The controller is able both to set up the chart of accounts and administrative procedures, consistent with statutory and tax regulations, and to prepare financial statements and manage the software application that enables the computerization of accounting procedures and management control models.

The controller therefore, in the role of temporary manager, can make an important contribution to business development by working side by side with the entrepreneur to ensure continuity of development for the organization and by methodically transferring typical controller skills in such areas as:

• financial planning;
• verification of investments and their sustainability;
• sales network development;
• coverage and transfer of expertise in the strategic area of management control.

The business literature and the trade press agree that it is critically important to open up corporate governance to outside professionals and managers, who sometimes even become part of the corporate CDA, with specific delegated authority and objectives.