Moving Finance From Bean Counters To Business Partners

The date is 1 January 2012 and I’m having my official first day as a finance manager for Maersk Drilling USA Inc in Houston. Reflecting on the first few months many years later I can now tell you the approach I took to get a good start.

Senior leaders typically give themselves three months or 100 days to observe what’s going on in the company and live with the “pains” i.e. the things that are not working well and led to the need of a new leader. However, what do you do when there are seemingly no pains?

The role I took over had the highest rated finance manager in our organization. He had the respect of head office and got good feedback from the business stakeholders. It looked like a tall mountain to climb!

Still, I took the same approach as senior leaders would and gave myself 100 days to live the role like my predecessor. The alternative would’ve been to come out guns blazing with all sorts of suggestions of how to do things differently. That would’ve been a losing path! 

From bean counters to business partners 

The classic part of Finance was working well, however, very little time was spent on analysis and decision support. At best, it was an ad hoc thing. Moreover, the team was demotivated as they felt there was no development and the same tasks kept repeating themselves month after month. I needed to provide a spark to get everything going.

From living the role like my predecessor, I found that there were plenty of opportunities to optimize the transactional part and also a few low hanging fruits when it came to analysis and decision support. And just like that my initative “From Bean Counters To Business Partners” was born. Here are the most important outcomes we delivered with that initiative. 

• Cut 1.5 days off the closing process and even closed on the first working day in some months (from normally the third working day)
• Implemented Concur (now a part of SAP) for managing travel expenses instead of Excel
• Delivered USD 4m in savings on a start-up budget for new drilling rigs
• Optimized the rate structure in our contracts for a benefit of USD 5m over the lifetime of two contracts 

It took long hours, reshuffling of the team as some team members didn’t fit in, and a lot of failures on the route to success. Still, it was all worth it as we had shown that it was possible to succeed with business partnering. Even at a small scale this was important as it was to pave the way for many others in the future. 

How can you do the same? 

In coming articles I’ll dig into how some of the achievements came about but for now let me summarize the learnings from my first leadership role. 

• Don’t start changing things right away – live “the pain” to understand what needs to change and what doesn’t need to change
• Dare to be bold even if no one is asking you to be so – I could’ve been content with just running the shop like it always had and everyone would probably still have been happy!
• Prepare to fail because if there are no failures you’re not trying hard enough – we had many month-end closures where we came so close to achieving a WD1 close but because of one-two mistakes it was all ripped away from us
• Get the team excited and engaged about where you want to go – if they’re not with you you’re not going anywhere! 

It was frightening yet exhilarating at the same time to take on a leadership role like this at such an early stage of my career. However, it was what I had been aiming for all along (expatriation and a leadership role) so I got what I asked for and I loved it!

What big challenges have you taken on at the early stage of your career? Did you play it safe or dared to go big? The more we move out of our comfort zone the more we learn (assuming we don’t break) so I can only encourage you to go big!

This was the seventh article in the series "My Early Career Lessons From A Decade In Finance & Accounting". You can read the previous article(s) below.

My Early Career Lessons From A Decade In Finance & Accounting

The Purpose Defining Moment In My Finance Career

Are You Looking For A Finance Job Or A Finance Career?

Here's Why You Should Take Charge Of Your Career

The Intersection Between Finance And Business Is Where It Got Interesting

The Accidental Finance Business Partner

A Young Finance Leader In The Land Of The Free

If wnat to become a better business partner you should consider taking our online course "Business Partnering Explained - Value Creation Unlocked" to get a better handle on the role. It's accredited for 5.5 CPD hours.

You can read a lot more articles about FP&A, Business Partnering, and Finance Transformation below. It all start's with “Introducing The Finance Transformation Nine Box” where you set the ambition for your transformation. You should join the Finance Business Partner Forum which is part of the Business Partnering Institute's online community where we will continue to discuss this topic and you can click here to follow me on Twitter.

Your Journey To Successful Business Partnering Explained

How To Create Value Through Business Partnering

Everyone Can Adopt A Business Partnering Mindset (part of a six-article series about FP&A Business Partnering)

From Business Partner To Working Within The Business (part of an article series where I interview finance professionals about their careers in FP&A and Business Partnering)

Is Your Product Optimized For Value Creation? (part of a toolbox series where we look at what tools FP&A professionals should leverage to drive value creation)

How Business Partners Turn Analysis To Insight (part of case study series where I interview business partners about how they drive value creation using real cases)

The Future Of FP&A: Two Ways To Take The Reins

What Is The Accounting Profession Paradox?

What Defines A Finance Master?

The New Career Path For Finance Professionals

How Finance People Can Be More Successful

The CFOs Roadmap To Transforming Finance

How To Become A Finance Business Partner

Financial Analyst vs. Finance Business Partner

Finance Business Partner Is A Bullshit Job

How Business Partners Keep A Plan On Track

Anders Liu-Lindberg is a Senior Finance Business Partner at Maersk supporting our largest product and I have more than 10 years of experience working with Finance at Maersk both in Denmark and abroad. I am also the co-founder of the Business Partnering Institute and owner of the largest group dedicated to Finance Business Partnering on LinkedIn with more than 8,000 members. My main goal at Maersk is to show how to be successful with business partnering and drive value creation as a trusted partner. I am the co-author of the book “Create Value as a Finance Business Partner” and a long-time Finance Blogger with 39.000+ followers.