CIMA's Value Creators: Ensuring Sustainable Growth

by Irene Teng, CIMA, 22 July 2011

In this engaging five-part series, we take a look at successful management accountants who are driving value-creation in leading global organisations.

In this article, we highlight the stories of Yang Yichao in China, Michael Tan in Malaysia and Sharon Flood in the UK.

Yang Yichao Creates Value in China

As CFO in the household and bodycare division in Greater China at global consumer goods company Sara Lee, Yang is using his CIMA qualification to design an innovative approach and deliver multi-million dollar savings.

“Traditional accounting focuses on the figures, but management accountancy shows you how to understand the story behind the numbers and to think from the business perspective,” he says.

“The emphasis is on getting the right information and using it the right way. Presenting information that is relevant and easy to understand is more important than creating fancy financial models.”

“When I first graduated from university, I worked for a bank but it just wasn’t for me,” Yang recalls. “The bank had very strict rules and I found myself drowning in procedures. The focus was on following the routine but I was more interested in how much you can contribute to a business.”

In 1996, he moved to a division of industrial gas suppliers, BOC, in Shanghai. At first, he worked on improving his skills in the technical side of accounting, such as reporting and modelling.

But it was not long before his boss told him that he would progress up the career ladder more quickly due to his skills and knowledge in finance and management.

‘Entrustment Loan’

Yang has initiated a number of innovative projects. As general manager of finance and administration at BOC’s China division, he saved the company more than US$1 million annually by devising what he calls a “virtual pooling treasury system.”

“China doesn’t allow non-financial organisations to borrow money from each other,” Yang explains. Because of this restriction, BOC couldn’t lend money to other entities in the same group.”

By the late 1990s, the scale of incoming business was increasing rapidly and the company found itself with surplus cash. But it was not able to use this surplus cash to support its newer offshoots.

“Working this way was time-consuming and expensive as the young companies were having to pay high interest rates on bank loans,” Yang recounts. “We had to find a solution.”

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