Expertise
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
Sound financial management is the backbone of an organization’s plans and success. Our engagements involve an assessment of your company’s financial health and financial structure to identify revenue and profit opportunities and developing practical solutions to optimize performance. For companies in early stages of growth or who are looking to accelerate growth, we support you in creating business and financial plans to prepare you to acquire financing.
We offer financial management services to help you:
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Understand the fundamentals of financial concepts if you are a small business or new entrepreneur
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Assess and test the reasonableness of your financial goals in relation to your strategic objectives
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Identify critical financial levers of your business and how to use these to maximize your revenues and profits
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Develop pricing and costing strategies with you for your products and services
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Assess and develop your front end revenue and billing process for revenue generation
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Develop financial dashboards to help you proactively manage your performance
Anna Yu is an experienced executive and advisor providing management consulting and advisory services to business leaders, owners, and organizations at all stages of growth. As President of Yu Consulting Group and Senior Advisor, Finance and Business Operations at Wentworth Strategy Group, she transforms visions to reality with a holistic approach that aligns strategy, people, and results.
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Anna’s advice centres on developing and achieving strategies for revenue and profit growth through proven best practices and practical solutions that translate to actionable and measurable outcomes. Her expertise includes finance, risk management, marketing, strategic and business planning, operational excellence, organizational reviews, and people optimization strategies.
STRATEGY & BUSINESS OPERATIONS
We combine expertise in strategic analysis with deep experience in planning and supporting the execution of tactical operations to drive results. Our engagements typically start with an assessment to prepare your team to align on key issues and identify enablers to develop your business. We then help you to refine your business model, including operational and organizational design, to deliver on your mission. Our insights will help you to determine the optimal allocation of financial, infrastructure, and people resources to achieve short term and long-term strategic objectives. Anna can help you with:
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Conducting employee, management, and partner interviews, workshops, and data collection
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Process mapping of end-to-end processes and organizational workflows
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Assessing key operational and performance metrics and comparing your business’ productivity to industry standards
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Uncovering cost and profit opportunities and help prioritize the most impactful changes to bring value to your business and customers
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Digital transformation
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Developing performance scorecards with risk mitigation plans for strong governance
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Creating management dashboards to track and manage KPIs
PEOPLE
People are at the centre of successful organizations and are integral to the execution of strategy. Our approach to talent attraction, retention, and optimization centres on:
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Organizational Structure Assessments
Organizational structures must be aligned with business goals and needs. We work with you and your management team to assess your team’s performance by conducting a detailed talent review by measuring performance and potential attributes, and help you with decisions to structure and develop the right team.
Business Mentorship
Anna’s many years of diverse experience make her a valued asset to business owners as a mentor and advisor in pursuing and attaining business goals. Our mentorship activities are bespoke and complementary to strategic planning and execution.
Leadership Development and Talent Optimization
We partner with you to identify and develop a customized plan for the development of effective business leadership skills across all levels of your organization, thus enhancing your ability to be proactive, anticipate change and optimize your team’s performance.
Meet Anna Yu
Anna Yu is a trusted transformational leader who guides companies and business leaders through growth and change by aligning people, processes and systems to common goals. She has extensive experience in helping organizations deliver winning outcomes with proven finance, risk management, marketing, strategic and business planning, operational excellence, and people optimization strategies. Her diverse career at Xerox Canada, Dell Financial Services, The CIT Group, and The Bank of Nova Scotia involved leading many teams and projects, delivering results and uncovering profit, cost, and operational efficiency opportunities.
Anna also holds interim executive roles supporting organizations’ growth strategies, business transformation and implementation and serves as a mentor supporting start-up companies and entrepreneurs with Futurpreneur. She has supported the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Business as a panelist mentoring professionals returning to work. She is an instructor at Seneca College with focus on leadership and business. Anna supports organizations in their path to growth in her work with channel businesses as a coach for strategic planning and leadership with and as a business mentor.
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Anna holds a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree majoring in Economics from the University of Toronto and is Six Sigma Green Belt certified. She is actively engaged in giving back to our communities, including helping professional newcomers to Canada navigate their careers in the Canadian market.
Approach
Anna’s approach to strategic analysis and execution ensures a comprehensive process that leads to results. Through our process, our team will:
I. DISCOVER
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Meet with you and your management team to understand your business and objectives
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Align with your expectations & timelines
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Conduct a review of data, processes, & interviews with your team
II. ASSESS
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Analyze data and interview inputs to understand current state and uncover gaps and opportunities
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Share our assessment of gaps and opportunities
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Align and affirm a recommended path forward
III. PLAN
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Lead planning process with you to identify key stakeholders and align on goals
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Lead and facilitate planning workshops with your management team
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Develop a plan to execute on your objectives
IV. EXECUTE
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Develop the activities and resources required for the execution plan
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Create a scorecard and a risk management plan to measure your performance against goals
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Follow up with account management and undertake evergreen assessments
FAROOK YOSOOF
Owner,
F45 Streetsville
Working with Anna was an illuminating and constructive experience. She is an experienced, knowledgeable, and savvy consultant who is able to delve into an organization's pain points and provide practical solutions. With her help, our operations have become smoother and our ability to build our business and scale has improved immensely. She provided us with solutions to adapt our model to meet the needs of "the new normal" and remain competitive post COVID-19. I highly recommend utilizing her services.
CHARLES
CHANG
Chief Marketing and Delivery Officer
Process Fusion Inc.
Process Fusion engaged with Anna's services to help us in the project management of the implementation of customer solutions. We have had excellent outcomes with Anna & her team helping us standardize our project management tools and processes. As well, Anna has had great success in aligning our teams, stakeholders and customers to achieve common goals. Anna is strategic and practical in her approach to achieve positive results impacting our bottom line.
BRIDGET HOFFER
Co-Founder,
Marigold Marketing & PR
A trusted guide for established companies and startups on their financial, strategic, business, and operational journeys, especially during this period of disruption. Anna is a calm, smart, and valued member of the teams, boards and advisories that she works with across many sectors. I have witnessed her expertise in action - she helps her clients get to where they want to go for success. Anna is an asset to companies establishing their path to profit-making - a trusted guide who moves businesses forward.
MARGARET ZANEL
Partner, Strategy & Leadership
Wentworth Strategy Group
I worked with Anna for over 10 years at Xerox, and more recently in entrepreneurial ventures. She is extremely talented, and one the most tenacious individuals I have ever worked with. She is a client focused executive whose acumen, strategic approach, and financial expertise has developed from her work with senior executives in large and small enterprises over many years, making her a highly valuable asset to any team. She has a very keen eye for detail and drives outcomes despite the challenges that come her way.
STEVEN CONNOR
Former VP, HR
Xerox Canada
It is rare to find someone that thrives in the fast paced and complicated environment of corporations today. Anna has a flair for taking a visionary idea and developing a strategy, business plan, operational programs, financial analysis, and organization design. She is flawless at execution. She is a consensus builder that brings people and cross functional teams on the journey to achieve common goals. Her experience in risk management, business operations, and finance is deep and nuanced.