Created a highly capable and valued Digital team to partner with Finance.
The Action / Approach
Replace this leading sentence with an intro into the things you did, if relevant including re-written versions of the bulleted lines below:
- What did you do to help… Streamlined, effective and mapped processes with improvement plans
- What did you do to help… Enhanced capability / productivity / benefits from shared services set-up
- What did you do to help… Enhanced capacity to deliver change
- What did you do to help… Successful delivery of complex finance projects
- What did you do to help… Appropriately skilled finance staff ready to take on the new real
- What did you do to help… Appreciation of maturity level and opportunities to progress
- What did you do to help… Reduced staffing and systems costs from automation, shared services or movement offshore
- What did you do to help… Reduce irregularities (e.g. unnecessary payments)
- What did you do to help… Reduced backlog of critical finance projects
- What did you do to help… Reduced number of errors due to misaligned systems / processes
- What did you do to help… Reduced delays and inaccuracy due to timely and accurate finance reporting
- What did you do to help… Reduced (risk of) fines from financial authorities
The Result
When I took over this role the Digital Finance team was not well regarded, short of capacity and even shorter of capability. Essentially order takers with a limited ability to deliver or influence.
By the time we had finished the team was highly capable, highly regarded and worked collaboratively with the entire Finance leadership team up to the CFO, who is now the CEO of JLR.
Typical areas where value has been realised:
- Improved Forecasting / Predictive Insights / Budgeting across multiple areas and we hold the long term strategic plan setting out the changes we needed to make.
- Quality, speed and savings from optimisation and automation of finance processes in multiple areas, including treasury, import export (Notably Brexit) and cash management.
- Time and resources to drive strategic topics and projects in the service of all business functions including HR, Manufacturing, procurement and compliance.
- My team helped to improve resilience and workload management across finance team, balancing individual and departmental priorities.
- Rapid adoption of new technologies and processes. Including Automation and Robotics, Agile processes and delivery, offshoring and latterly investigations into how AI might be able to accelerate value faster.
- I become a true business partner to the CFO, CHRO, the Sustainability Director and the CEO of Special Vehicles. I grew and led the team that had the same responsibility across multiple functions including Audit, Internal Affairs, Royal and Diplomatic and Legal Affairs.
- My role was to attract, develop and retain quality staff, and build a team ethos based upon fairness, safety, support and openness. This in turn led to a highly capable and diverse team with a valuable set of global capabilities.
- I have always had two main focuses. To build and run a capable team made up of a group of individuals from many walks of life. To set clear objectives and then trust the team to develop the plans and strategies they need to make truly meanigful progress.
Pains typically relieved include:
- What did you do to help… Finance function under a lot of pressure from operational tasks
- What did you do to help… Inefficient or non-standard processes
- What did you do to help… Complex and changing government regulations across multiple jurisdictions
- What did you do to help… Lack of the right resource for projects to improve performance
- What did you do to help… Unable to maintain steady cash flow and control costs
- What did you do to help… Arguing over data quality instead of supporting data driven decisions
- What did you do to help… Unable to produce accurate timely reports
- What did you do to help… Not acting as a business partner due to lack of involvement in key decision making
- What did you do to help… Contentious stakeholder relations and/or lack of board confidence absorb excessive amounts of direct personal time
Focus In On: Responsible for Finance / CFO
New Areas of Value:
Improved Forecasting / Predictive Insights / Budgeting
Quality, speed and savings from optimisation and automation of finance processes
Time and resources to drive strategic topics and projects
Improved resilience and workload management across finance team
Rapid adoption of new technologies
Becoming true business partner(s) to CEO and across the business
Attract, develop and retain quality staff
Enhanced ability to drive financial returns, cashflow and sustainability
Improvements around:
Finance function under a lot of pressure from operational tasks
Inefficient or non-standard processes
Complex and changing government regulations across multiple jurisdictions
Lack of the right resource for projects to improve performance
Unable to maintain steady cash flow and control costs
Arguing over data quality instead of supporting data driven decisions
Unable to produce accurate timely reports
Not acting as a business partner due to lack of involvement in key decision making
Contentious stakeholder relations and/or lack of board confidence absorb excessive amounts of direct personal time
