Experience in the Smart Financial Operations Job Family through at least 2 or 3 roles provides deeper financial knowledge and shared service model experience. Leading a team of 3rd party vendors and internal Associates, to standardize and automate activities to deliver operational excellence, will give you customer centric expertise.
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After 12 years of diverse finance experience within the Mars Wrigley segment (former “Chocolate” segment), I was looking for regional & cross-segment experiences and the opportunity to lead the diverse team of Associates. And with support of my line manager I made a decision to join Mars Global Service Finance Operations team to lead North American Accounts Receivable team.
Coming from the segment opened “my eyes” on how challenging, complex and most importantly developmentally rewarding Finance Operations roles are. I had amazing experiences to drive operational excellence, lead organizational re-design, simplify the systems landscape, implement Cloud-based and RPA digital solutions, as well as, deploy Global Delivery Center with the 3rd party provider for Accounts Receivable finance operations in India. Through the industry groups’ connections and benchmarking sharing, the role has also broaden my perspective on finance best practices outside of Mars.
Balancing priorities in the complex finance operations environment remains one of the biggest challenges. Complexities of finance operations come from multiple angles: we directly dealing with customers, business units stakeholders, 3rd party providers, health & stability of end-to-end processes, transformational changes, business integrations & divestures while we are delivering day-to-day operations, maintaining adequate internal controls, improving performance and driving service excellence. That is why in finance operations we are always striving for simplification and agile continuous improvement mindset.
Creating and sharing clear vision and purpose with the team and stakeholders is the key. By taking everyone involved on a journey helps to facilitate collaboration and navigate through all of the complexities of day-to-day operational environment with the future and common goal in mind.
Mainly I have gained SFO experience through managing multiple Finance Operations teams: starting from setting up Fixed Assets team in MGFS Europe, adding additional scope in the area of Intercompany Billings, and managing Payroll/Time & Attendance teams for 3 countries in Europe plus Travel and Expenses for European countries covered by MGSF. Additionally I have increased my experience through SFO Transformation projects which is my current focus area.
SFO is not just Financial Operations or what we often say accounting. Everything what we do on daily basis in operations has significant impact on large population of Mars associates, vendors and customers. Additionally being part of financial operations increase significantly perspective on Control and Governance part which is embedded into every single activity we perform on daily basis (this is still an underestimated area in our organization). Last but not least – having the opportunity to work in multiple different areas of SFO helps to get better understanding of Financial Operations and all functional aspects and dependencies between sub-processes.
Mast challenging in SFO area is lack of standardization we have in Mars. This often doesn’t help us to move fast with changes and improvements. Additionally standardization / transformation activities require high alignment between multiple functions which are impacted by changes in operations which is often challenging and can’t be reached without proper change management.
After several years in SFO area I know better how faster solve operational challenges – better process and interdependencies helps to more quickly identify stakeholders to work with (cross segment / cross country connection which we have in SFO helps me very quickly to identify partners for discussions, escalations and so on). Broder SFO experience also help me to decide in right focus area – e.g. prioritizing on standardization opportunities.
I had the opportunity to expand my knowledge and gain financial expertise with a 1 year job rotation in Financial Operations. To make it happen, in development conversations with my line manager, we have planned the right path for those type of experiences and I was prepared whenever it would happen.
In Financial Operations, I was able to expand my network, enhance my business perspective skills, combining P&L and Cash perspectives, and therefore improved my decision making process.
The challenging part for me is that I had to move to another city for 1 year and lead a team of 8 Associates for one entire year, taking care of the deliveries and their development.
Today, I am a Finance Associate that is focused not only in the P&L, but also the NCFO consequences on every decision that comes in the S&OP+ process and I am more capable of driving the business to achieve cash targets.
The Breadth layer is about having a variety of experiences. It’s about becoming more comfortable with the way we do business whether in a new country or in a new segment. Experience in this layer empowers Associates to make credible and informed decisions and create value for the business.
Experiences expand your business acumen; they help you understand how Mars works as an organization. In this layer you can demonstrate your ability to make strategic choices and create value in a variety of situations and scenarios. Successful experience in this may demonstrate that you can manage better business outcomes.
The People layer gives you experience in people management, a critical capability for managers and leaders across the organization. If you wish to manage large scale teams, significant experience will be required as part of this people layer.
Gaining experience across Finance pillars will help Associates gain perspective, business understanding and be more credible when making decisions. You build functional skills by gaining experiences in at least two of the three job families within the Finance function (i.e. Innovative Business Partnering, Smart Financial Operations, Enhanced Specialized Services) as well as some experience in the Digital space.
The Breadth layer is about having a variety of experiences. It is about becoming more comfortable with the way we do business whether in a new country or in a new segment. Gaining this experience empowers Associates to take more credible and informed decisions and understand where the value comes from. Some of these experiences can be checked off simply by working in project teams that are cross-segment, cross-country, or within different types of business models (i.e. Mature vs Emerging markets, CPG vs Retail, DTC or Services business, Shared services business).
