CIMA (The Chartered Institute of Management Accounting) is an internationally recognised qualification which combines financial and business theory, as well as showing you how to apply that theoretical knowledge in practice. Obtaining the CIMA qualification is accepted by employers throughout the world as proof that you understand strategic thinking and can interpret all aspects of business to achieve long term success. Inspire by the experience...
Change for the better
Having worked in sales for a number of years I moved into a role between finance and sales at computer hardware provider Compaq (acquired by Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2002), which gave me a real interest in how the finance function works.
I then home-studied for my qualification while based in the UK and settled into a series of roles in finance – my last pure finance role was looking at the balance sheet and forecasting for the EMEA region.
I then began a business practice finance role, which coincided with a move back to South Africa in 2010. It was at a time when HP was going through a huge amount of change. In this role I started to look more closely at the approach of the sales force to achieve better returns at a lower cost.
A small core management team put together the structure for the plan, which set out to not only empower the sales team, but also encourage it to compile high-quality information from clients.
Part of the work involved making sure sales professionals understood that this information would be used not only to improve overall intelligence on the market, but to give them the means to close more and better deals.
It gave sales teams the chance to construct their own P&Ls and showed them how and where they needed to improve their efforts.
As a result, salespeople began asking me if I could attend customer meetings for a number of reasons. For example, I could talk to the finance director of the client if they were present, or help with contract negotiations.
My role has changed to become increasingly more customer-facing as a result of my ability to translate detailed financial information into effective sales material and demonstrate and articulate the benefits of doing business with HP in a way that makes sense to other senior finance leaders.
The impact of this has been a dramatic fall in bad debts and a drastic increase in returns on large deals in hardware infrastructure and professional services.
My CIMA qualification has helped me all the way in this process. It has given me the confidence to make key decisions and better understand the broad range of financial implications that each decision brings.
This understanding also means I can clearly explain the reason behind decisions to finance and non-finance people alike.
Ian Smulders, ACMA, CGMA, HP, Enterprise business finance manager, Durban, South Africa
Posted by CIMA on Tue, 16/04/2013 - 14:03