WORLD-CLASS FINANCE

We are in a fast-paced world wherein everything seems to be changed and

improved immediately. We are in the generation wherein everyone needs to level up

their skills and competencies to be able to provide the best services that a person

can do to support the goal of their employers. Sometimes you don’t even know

where to put yourself in the industry so you’ll know that you are doing the right thing

but this should not be felt by an individual and even by a group of people, which

includes Finance function. Logically we can say the Finance in all fields and in every

business, Finance is an integral part of the company. Why? Without the Finance, it is

not just you’ll not be having staff who can do recording, analysis and reports of the

performance but at the same time you will not have an important partner in running

the business. Nowadays, most of the multinational companies including those part of

the Fortune 500 is now either outsourcing their Finance function or establishing their

own Finance operations centers to somehow minimize their cost and boost their

Financial income. Indeed, it was a long journey not just for the companies who did

this kind of strategy but also for the Finance team in gaining the trust and confidence

of the business that they can deliver a quality service.

As being part of the Finance team of companies from both multinational and

local, I have seen how pivotal our role to the success of a company, though it is

always considered as back office work wherein most of the times the efforts is mostly

forgotten to be recognized. We do all know that we almost do the dirty works and

fixed everything under our books so our report will be reliable for management

decision making purposes, so when a change happen impacting the Finance

Department there are various factors need to be considered and give importance

that the usual Finance Operation will not be impacted. I know that change is a

constant thing and that even applies to Finance Department as there will be a need

to add, improve or remove something in the process to either somehow level up the

skills already possessed by the team or to cope up with the requirements needed in

the team to leverage the abilities of the Finance team in the global market. But how

these changes will impact the business and the company itself is exciting and worth

to watch out for. I know that change is happening as company has the better ideas

on how to achieve their goals and it is just somehow reshaping the company

strategies to have a better company results however changes in the Finance team

involves various operating units, clusters, departments and many more so this is also

something we need to watch out for.

But just like what we have in my current employer, we do have this big change

which we called World-Class Finance (WCF) wherein involves huge number of

Finance onshore employees which some of the goals of the changes is giving more

accountability to the Finance Operations (FO) centers and to reduce the cost of the

company. This changes in our company will really play a big role in the

transformation of the FO centers as business partner. This strategy will be

implemented across Shell but the North America (NAM) countries will be the first one

to experience this change, which is just the wave 1 of this WCF journey.

Given the importance of the Finance department in a company, everyone in

the team can perform their function accordingly not just those transactional but also

those tasks that involves higher accountability. The finance team should be

knowledgeable in the business so they will be able to convert business language to

Finance language in which higher level of Management is relying in the output of the
Finance to make sound decisions for the business’ benefits. Learning and

accumulating business knowledge would really require a lot of time, sacrifices and

experiences for you to say that you know the business then from there you can be

able show and say how the company business works then it will be easier for you to

deal to your everyday work. With enough training and time, people in the finance can

be reasonably reliable to provide information and necessary support to the business

specially that now the people in the finance is not just part of the back office of the

company but a business partner in which expertise would be needed to provide help

and recommendations to immediately make decisions.

However, a quick change in the company’s Finance organization would really

be a challenging one specially if it will involve of transferring of responsibility and

accountability from one person to another and this is what we are experiencing in

Shell right now as some of the Onshore finance activities are not just being

transferred to FO centers but at the same time cutting the numbers of the onshore

employed people for the company so company cost will also be lessen. Given that

this change is really moving fast, reducing roles and opening for everyone the roles

left so the senior leaders can pick the best person that will fit in the specific position

during resourcing process. There will be transitioned period for these changes

however it is just short period of time and to add on that people in the business is

having the hand-over and at the same time they are filling up a new role and this will

be hard so a perfect collaboration between FO and onshore will be required to have

this successful WCF journey. The WCF will also need to clear the responsibility of

FO teams across different FO centers, this is to avoid confusion and to promote the

ONE FINANCE as well within Shell. As part of the FO team specifically Joint Venture

Accounting (JVA) Team in Manila, we are not somehow directly impacted of the
changes but one of the impacts to us that I can see is that our stakeholders will

change due to this WCF in which we expect that adjustment period for them to gain

the knowledge and master the process will be there. Another impact is that there are

activities being transferred to JVA Manila in relation to this WCF in which almost

every month a new activity is being added and it requires proper training and

business knowledge to deliver a quality task.

With this, we do not how long will be the adjustment period for our new

stakeholders and we are not so sure if in the short period of time, do we have the

right trainings and capabilities required to perform the activities being transferred and

meet the business’ expectation to us and these all questions are all part of the WCF

journey. In response to these questions and uncertainties, this research purpose is to

know the how the world-class finance impact to FO-JVA Manila or to research about

effectiveness of the world-class finance to JVA-Manila.