Saint Petersburg International Business Association (SPIBA) in association with BDO Unicon Outsourcing has run a conference on "Financial service optimization" for top managers and chief financial officers of orgnanizations from St. Petersburg. Representatives from Northern Capital Gateway, ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), Boehringer Ingelheim and BDO Unicon Outsourcing have told about different methods of financial process efficiency improvement and their own experience of their implementation.
Elena Silkina, financial officer of Northern Capital Gateway ("Air gate of the northern capital"), shared her experience in optimization of currency control function at management company of Pulkovo airport. The company interacts with non-resident counterparts on a regular basis and monthly performs more than 500 currency control operations according to its operation. In order to implement that function one needed a complex approach involving both reorganization of some processes of the financial service and additional resources, and communication between departments and within the whole company. One of the most important aspects in adjustment of currency control function was understanding of its significance and importance by NGS's executive officers and employees, as well as risk and responsibility of the managers in case of failure to observe requirements of legal codes on currency.
A center for currency control expert appraisement was established in the company as a part of the process organization: now NGC's chamber always holds specialists to whom the employees may refer their questions on financial processing. The experts regularly perform control of current settlements with the company's counterparts, constantly exchange their experience with other specialists of that area and representatives of banks. Clear regulation of all processes and training of personnel involved in export and import contracts is also important. Apart from strict system of currency control (including that in case of introduction of documents in the organization's ERP system), a currency law violation responsibility system has become a major motivating issue for the employees. In particular, penalty load is distributed on violating departments' budgets. Eventually all NGC's departments have their interest in observing discipline while implementing currency control functions.
Furthermore, Elena Silkina turned the audience's attention to the importance of settling relations with financial organizations: when interaction with a bank is efficient the latter becomes a reliable partner of the company in observing currency laws' requirements.
АССА's project manager Natalia Mitkevich reported on GBS's (Global Business Services) approach that has to become the following step in development of common service centers' model and unite all non-core processes of the company in the same structure. This model allows involving resources of companies and optimizing operation of all auxiliary services more efficiently.
Viktoria Smirnova, chief accountant of Boehringer Ingelheim reported on optimization of a financial process by means automation and outsourcing in her company (financial reports processing).
Lyudmila Shusterova, BDO Unicon Outsourcing's Chief Strategic Development Officer reported on BDO's experience in searching for financial specialists and working with financial personnel in a company. Top resource and value of BDO Unicon Outsourcing, as well as of any outsourcing organization, is its employees. In that case, most of them are financial specialists. Participants of the conference could find out how BDO fights ‘starvation' of labour market and competes for valuable employees, how it selects appropriate candidates, and how it ‘raises' highly proficient financial specialists.
According to the event's participants, many issues considered by the speakers are being actual for most companies in Russia, and, probably, this experience sharing may eventually provide usage of all available optimization tools to their full extent.
