Discipline The financial management of the enterprise corresponds to an important theoretical-applicative field responsible for investigating the necessary conditions for ensuring the maximum efficiency of the financial function of the enterprise. From this perspective, the enterprise is seen as a complex financial system, respectively a set of organizational structures, financial-monetary flows, informational relations and managerial decisions, articulated and functionalized so as to provide the necessary financial support for the economic activity of the enterprise. optimal.
The financial function is one of the most important responsibilities that a modern enterprise must assume in order to successfully achieve its global mission - creating and maximizing economic value. The critical character of the financial field is determined by the fact that, at enterprise level (but not only), economic efficiency acquires relevance and conclusion only if it is expressed through financial-monetary categories and indicators. Of course, there are other dimensions of enterprise efficiency, non-financial and non-monetary, just as important as, for example: product quality, customer satisfaction, internal climate, image and reputation, ecological impact, social effects, contribution to technological progress, etc.
The particularity and advantage of the financial perspective on the efficiency of the enterprise results from the possibility of precise quantification of economic effects and efforts with the help of financial-monetary aggregates, ensuring, on this objectified basis, comparability over time of data on performance and performance of the enterprise. Also, the approach of the enterprise activity through the prism of finances allows the rigorous and pertinent analysis of the generative factors of the success or failure of the enterprise. These arguments support the necessity and importance of the financial management of the enterprise as a distinct field of management.
The sphere of the financial management of the enterprise is circumscribed by the totality of the managerial decisions and options that aim at attracting and the rational and sustainable allocation of the financial resources of the enterprise. The major objective of the financial management of the enterprise consists in the long-term maximization of the economic value of the initial capital investment made by the shareholders of the enterprise. In this way, the approaches regarding the financial management of the enterprise must be subordinated to the restrictions and development priorities deriving from the general business strategy promoted by the enterprise. Considering the mentioned conditions, we specify that the financial management has the role of ensuring the financial support of the enterprise strategy. For this purpose, the financial management of the enterprise is obliged to make an extremely difficult and delicate arbitration, between the short-term and the long-term financial constraints to which the business is subject.
The approach requires, without a doubt, a predictive, anticipatory approach of the system of financial factors and processes that shape, in one sense or another, the dynamics of the enterprise. In other words, financial management involves a very careful control of the economic and financial risks likely to affect the company, especially in a fluid and uncertain business context. Maintaining the main financial balances and maximizing the financial performances in the conditions of reasonable risks outlines, therefore, the preferential maneuvering area of the financial management of the enterprise. The optimization of the internal financial flows and the financial relations with the economic environment, especially with the financial-banking market, is presented, therefore, as the fundamental stake of the financial management of the enterprise. The harmonization of the financial cycles (financing and investments) and of the exploitation cycles (associated to the operations of supply, manufacture, storage, sales) constitute, for this reason, the very essence of the financial management of the enterprise.
For the financial management of the enterprise, the slogan "Maximizing opportunities and minimizing risks" would be an extremely accurate and edifying synthesis of issues and concerns. Prudence, reasonableness, responsibility and feasibility are the basic criteria in financial decision making processes. In the financial management of the enterprise, the application of these principles materializes in a wide and diversified arsenal of quantitative models and techniques whose purpose is to ensure the objective and substantiated nature of the reasoning and conclusions based on which the management of the enterprise will design its decisions and plans. finance.
This course was conceived and developed based on the ideas set out above on the nature and content of the discipline of the enterprise. The course included aspects and topics of major importance, such as: financial analysis of the enterprise, financial balance, short-term financial management, financial planning, investment management, long-term financial decisions, etc. The specificity of this course consists in the permanent association and reporting of the financial phenomena to other specialized fields identifiable within the enterprise - logistics, production, marketing, human resources, general strategy. Finances cannot be isolated from the whole enterprise. The interaction of financial and non-financial factors is the force that propels the company towards performance. Moreover, this argument justifies the inclusion of a separate chapter, dedicated to the goodwill and intellectual capital of the enterprise as areas of interference and osmosis between financial and non-financial phenomenology manifested at the enterprise level. We believe that such a mixed approach can only stimulate a deeper understanding of the real springs of the company's performance.
This course supports both students from the specializations "Finance - Banking" and "Accounting and Management Informatics", as well as practitioners interested in modern and efficient ways of managing the company's finances. In this sense, the exposition of the paradigms and theoretical concepts is illustrated and completed with the help of a rich palette of problems and solved applications. Readers also have the opportunity to strengthen their practical skills in the field of financial management of the enterprise by "Solving" some problems proposed for solution. We sincerely hope that this work will be a real guide in the world of microeconomic finance, a world of paradoxes animated both by incandescent passions and cold calculations.
Assoc. Dr. Roxana Arabela Dumitrascu