Ep. 157: Wes Saber - Serving as a Co-pilot for the Business Transformation Journey

Wes Saber, CFO for HARIBO of America, joins Count Me In to talk about the popular topic of business transformation. Wes has been an international leader in innovative management philosophy and business development for more than 22 years. His expertise in developing global enterprises has led him to his current role as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for HARIBO of America, producer of the #1 gummi in the U.S. He spearheaded the development of the $242M investment to build HARIBO’s first-ever U.S. factory, projected to create hundreds of career opportunities in the first phase build-out. In this episode, Wes talks about why business transformation is such a popular topic, his experience with transformations and the specific role(s) the finance team played, and how finance leaders can manage change and promote teamwork and adaptability. Download and listen now!

About Wes Saber: https://www.haribo.com/en-us/about-us/meet-our-board/wes-saber

About HARIBO:

• https://www.haribo.com/en-us
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/haribo-of-america-inc-
• https://www.instagram.com/haribousa/?hl=en

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. Here with you again, as your host, Adam Larson, as I kick off episode 157 of our series, Count Me In has shared a number of conversations relating to business transformation, but today's featured guest speaker shares a unique perspective on the topic Wes Saber, CFO of HARIBO of America joined us to talk about how the finance function and finance leaders serve as best copilots for any business transformation journey. Wes is a great leader who constantly encourages his staff as he promotes change and transformation. So keep listening to hear more as we head over the conversation now.

Mitch: (00:54)
We have heard a lot about business transformation, particularly in finance and accounting. So to kick off our conversation today from your perspective and through your experiences, really my first question is why? Why is this such an important topic for our listeners?

Wes: (01:09)
Thank you very much for having me today. Business transformation is the constant, in the current business world. Business transformation is important to keep the business relevant, the strategy of the business agile and us as professional, very relevant in terms of competency and business acumen as we go. Business transformation is a journey that has different milestone as we grow as a business and as professional, it's very important to be able to adapt change. What makes finance and accounting professionals and overall business professionals successful in their career is the world resilience and business resilience. And us being as professionals, resilience is being demonstrated during business transformation in a form of a project in a form of system change, even culture evolution as well. So there is so many transformation that happens around us. Sometimes we're directly in the middle of it as professional as finance and accounting professional. And sometimes we are in the co-pilot seats and sometimes we're impacted with it. So it's very important to understand where we sit as professional in terms of the business transformation.

Mitch: (02:28)
Well, thank you for that. Very good perspective to kick things off. And I want to go in a little bit more about your personal experiences and, you know, your company HARIBO is a 100 year old private company. Now there's been a lot of innovation and modernization since inception. So as an established company, how have you been able to manage such a digital transition over this time?

Wes: (02:51)
So, I'm proud to be working me and my colleagues in a company that's privately owned and celebrate a hundred years, December, 2020. And, as we are proud of the values we live and the company, we are, very proud of the projects and the success that we achieve every year. In HARIBO of America, we started a growth journey, starting 2015 and we're embarking in building our brand and our business capability and manufacturing facility and our organization and culture. We are predominantly a European company, that adds most and the majority of the business in Europe, but the North America business is, taking off, starting 2015. So it's kind of like a startup in our hundred years old company and looking into the future, especially after what happens in 2020 with the pandemic. It's important to look at that as a challenge. However, it's more critical to look at that as an opportunity and prepare ourselves, for the future to be able to compete. digitization of business, there can be an aspect of, simply handling data to all the way to producing a product. We are, embarking on, opening our, new first North America manufacturing facility next year in 2022. And, we are talking these days about industry 4.0. Remote guided vehicles, robotics, big data, troubleshootings and to be able to actually utilize our scale and be efficient and get the best quality of our products to consumer. And as a professional and different functions, including manufacturing, engineering, sales, and finance and accounting, everybody plays role in getting that achieved. Sometimes in the most famous example of, digitization in, the finance and accounting world is the ERP implementation or the system that integrate the entire business, from end, to end. And that would include typically the costing that we have, the inventory that we look at, the analysis, the management accounting, the financial accounting, the reporting, the consolidation, of course, we all know about this, but what's changing in the digitization is how do we use PI? What tools we have in the world? What's relevant to our industry and what's relevant to our function? And how is that gonna help the company and educate from now to be competitive and continue to achieve on strategy? So digitization is no longer just, an element of the future, but actually absolutely is, how business is being done today. And it develops, and it develops in a high speed.

Mitch: (05:51)
Now you just mentioned, the function specifically, right? How it's impacting the industry, and then it funnels into the individual function. So accounting and finance, how did the finance function specifically play a role in some of the transformation projects that you've been a part of so far? And what would you say are some of the top enablers when it comes to the finance function, going through business transformation, digital transformation, and along those lines?

Wes: (06:18)
Absolutely. So everything starts from the strategy of the business and where the business is heading, and everybody plays a role in that, especially finance and accounting and finance and accounting always have two hats in the business, a custodian hat and a co-pilot hat, looking at the business, from a custodianship standpoint, looking at the digitization or the systems or the strategy being a custodian means finance and accounting plays such a critical role in keeping the business in, strong governance environment, understanding risk management. What will we face, during our, growth revenue invoicing, risk management to the plan we set to ourself allocating resources on budget to certain initiatives...