Managing financial processes across regions and systems

In this episode of "Controllers Classified," we’re joined by Daniel Hilli, Head of Business Control at Alstom. Alstom is a multinational company that builds and services trains and signaling systems. In fact, millions of people everyday are transported by Alstom trains and systems. Given the size of the company, this episode focuses on how to implement and manage financial processes across different regions and systems at scale. This includes dialogue around when to centralize vs. decentralize reporting and budgeting processes, how to find efficiencies through digitalization and tool consolidation, and the best way to build lines of communication across global teams.

Daniel also does a deep dive into Alstom’s acquisition of Bombardier and the integration implications that followed - including how to bring together disparate teams and technology and how to gain a holistic financial picture of the business and its spend in a post-acquisition environment.

The conversation closes with how Daniel tackles long-term projects like ERP implementation - and general thoughts for how and when to leverage external solutions consultants for implementations.

Key Quotes:

• On the strategic role of finance: “So when you try to put what the issue is in numbers and show that, but how do we generate margin by doing this? All of a sudden people take a minute, think about it. And then you have the tough discussion.”
• On acquisition integration: “So 40,000 people, plus 40,000 people integrating different systems, a bit different cultures trying to do a setup that works. And then we go into what kind of manual processes have we inserted along the way. And all of these things we're now trying to automate.”
• On finding efficiencies: “We have a lot of systems everywhere. And then the question is, how do you do some kind of amalgamation there? How do you now streamline this?
• On system ownership: “It's not automated at all. You go into a meeting and you ask ‘Who did this’ and ‘Why does it look like this?’ You don't want those kinds of discussions. You want the one person to own the whole flow. And then, at some point it becomes apparent where the problem is when the person gets the holistic view.”
• On ERP implementation: “Be a bit aggressive in the beginning because time flies. Time management is key. All of a sudden, the first year just went by and not much really happened, and then in the final three months, all of a sudden everything needs to happen at once.”

Show Notes

• (1:15) - Intro/journey to success
• (6:10) - Interactions with departments at Alstom
• (9:25) - Structuring the finance department on a global scale
• (17:20) - Major acquisitions and implementations
• (26:12) - Identifying the top needs during an ERP implementation
• (28:14) - Controllers are fun too/close!

Links

• Connect with Daniel
• Visit Alstom
• Connect with Erik
• Check out Brex