A CFO Journey: Bean-Counter to Business Partner

by Cesar Bacani, 03 February 2012

0 comments

Facebook

Digg

Twitter

topics:
Management

tags:
business partnering finance transformation

When Ong Wee Gee became Vice-President, Finance, Asia Pacific, at data centre specialist Equinix five years ago, he found a well-functioning but limited finance function. “It was a lot more brick-and-mortar, a lot more bean-counting,” he recalls.

His mandate was to transform finance to actively support business growth. Today, Ong spends half his time on business partnering and the other half on statutory and compliance activities. “It’s not that these [compliance finance activities] are not important,” says the finance chief. “It’s just that the people that I have are mostly self-sufficient and independent in doing what they need to do.”

Singapore-based Ong spoke to CFO Innovation’s Cesar Bacani about finance’s journey from pure bean-counting to business partnering and the lessons learned on changing mind-sets and making sure finance people are, in his words, “in the right seat on the right bus.” Excerpts:

Was it a great shock for the finance function at Equinix when you came in?

It was a gradual transition. I did not go in and say: In the next three months, this has to be changed. It was: In six months, what are the targets, what are the milestones, what were achieved? In one year, two years, five years?

Now being in the job for five years, I can confidently say that the finance function is very different from five years ago.

How big was the finance function at the time?

I probably have a few more people than what I had five years ago, but then we are now supporting four times the business from a revenue perspective. Our business has grown [to annual revenues in excess of US$200 million].

I did not do overnight changes. I familiarized myself with the business, with the structures, organization, job descriptions, talent and so on, and gradually redeployed people and restructured the organization bit by bit.

We had a lot of charts of accounts; there was a long, long list. Through the years, we managed to streamline, to take away those that are not required. We’re still doing that. The chart of accounts is something that you always need to continue doing.

There were manual processes and we gradually moved to automation, systems-based, like GL posting. Invoices, we used to do all the paper verification. Everything now is in the system. You process the invoice in the system, you approve the invoices in the system. No more manual verification and approval.

PRs (purchase requests) used to be raised manually and put in . . . Now you raise the PR, you process the PR, you approve the PR in the system. A lot of fixed assets accounting is now automated and systems driven. I don’t know exactly the monthly closing time before I came, probably a week, but now it’s four days.

Because we’re a listed company, obviously we have tight timelines. Our Global CFO [Keith Taylor] is always challenging us to make monthly closing shorter. Analysts and investors are always anxious [about the earnings release]. It has been improving

Is business enterprise software helping?

It definitely helps. Automation, a lot of the systems, if you do it right, if you do it the automated way, the right workflow, it will help in streamlining the closing time.

Comment on this article

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Comment: *

Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <a> <p> <span> <div> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <img> <img /> <map> <area> <hr> <br> <br /> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <table> <tr> <td> <em> <b> <u> <i> <strong> <font> <del> <ins> <sub> <sup> <quote> <blockquote> <pre> <address> <code> <cite> <embed> <object> <strike> <caption>
Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Use  to create page breaks.

More information about formatting options

Verification Code

This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

What is the fourth word in the phrase "ehad wetuy uyawap oneku nuz"?: *

Accounting and Regulations

CFO innovation Asia Accounting and Regulation the Asia Pacific resource center for senior finance executives, daily news, analysis, best practice and case studies in Accounting Regulation, IFRS, US GAAP, Tax, investor relations, corporate governance, Corporate Law, Financial Regulators, Internal Audit, Audit, Corporate Law.

Auditing, Investor Relations, Law and Compliance, Tax

Finance and Banking

CFO innovation Asia, Finance and Banking the Asia Pacific resource center for senior finance executives, daily news, analysis, best practice and case studies in Corporate Finance, trade finance, treasury and risk management, capital expenditure, Banking, mergers and acquisitions

Cash and Liquidity Management, Corporate Finance, Insurance, Treasury Management

Management

CFO innovation Asia the Asia Pacific resource center for senior finance executives, daily news, analysis, best practice and case studies in Finance Management, Corporate Governance, Human Resource Management, Compensation and Benefits, Mergers and Acquisitions, Professional Development, Corporate Real Estate, Risk Management, Budgeting and Forecasting, Business Process Management, Business Process Reengineering, Outsourcing.

Budgeting and Planning, Business Expense Management, Human Capital Management, Outsourcing and Shared Services, Risk Management

Metrics

Corporates, Financial Services

Technology

CFO innovation Asia Technology the Asia Pacific resource center for senior finance executives, daily news, analysis, best practice and case studies in Finance Systems, Business Intelligence, EPR, Accounting software, CRM, Cloud Computing, Telecommunications, Business Process Outsourcing, Business Process Management Software.

Business Intelligence, Enterprise Software and Systems, Financial Systems, Security