My First Real Impact Cases As A Finance Business Partner

If there’s one thing you aim for as a business partner it’s to have impact on the business. In fact, it’s the only thing you should aim for. If you’re not influencing decisions for the better and driving more value creation in the company, you shouldn’t be there. It’s that simple really. That’s also why the impact cases I’ve had as a business partner are the proudest moments of my early career in Finance and Accounting.

As I’m sharing my lessons learned I wanted to tell one of those impact stories and what I learned from it. Then I want you to tell me your impact stories in the comments and we can compare notes. Because if there’s one thing I’ve found we’re missing to truly succeed with business partnering it is impact stories. At least those that are told in public. We need to build confidence in ourselves that we can do it so let me start today! 

Situation, Complication, Resolution – Impact 

When presenting an impact case, it’s also good to have a common framework and in this story I’ll use the SCR-I framework (Situation, Complication, Resolution – Impact). 

Situation 

In 2013, Maersk Drilling had a bad financial year and we were told to come up with initiatives that could improve our profitability. At Maersk Drilling USA Inc. we had three activities on-going. The general operation of a drilling rig and two start-up projects where drilling rigs being built in South Korea were supposed to start up operation the year after.

The two start-up projects had been allocated USDm 20 each for hiring and training the crew that should operate the rig. Due to the financial situation they were both given a target to save 10% each i.e. a total of USDm 4. 

Complication 

In short, no one had any ideas or took any initiative and the deadline to act drew closer and closer. If we didn’t do anything fast, we would surely miss the mark and not save anything! 

Resolution 

One day though, as I was sitting in my office with the drilling rig managers to discuss the latest monthly spend report one of them threw the fish on the dish. 

“So, what are we going to do about those savings target? Should we maybe have a workshop to figure it out?” 

“Good idea”, I said and turned around to my computer to start booking the workshop for two weeks later.

In the meantime, I would piece together the background story of why we needed to do this, the format of the workshop, and how to facilitate it. We only had two hours and a steep mountain to climb!

We spent the first 30 min for me to set the scene and getting everyone aligned. Then followed 45 min of brainstorming in two groups and concluding with a debrief in plenum. The ideas poured out but there was one in particular that showed a lot of promise.

Making sure we had fully understood all the ideas my financial analyst and I went back to run the numbers. A few days later the proposal was ready. That one idea could save us almost everything we needed. It was simple too! We just had to postpone the hiring of some of the more junior crew members because as one of the guys put it. 

“I don’t need them in South Korea for training as they’ll likely just go out into town and get into fights!” 

Instead, we would gather them all locally for some training closer to the start of operation. This would have an impact on salary and training costs. We sent the idea to HQ and quickly got the approval to go ahead. 

Impact 

We needed to save USDm 4 and we did it! In the months that followed we closely scrutinized the development in the numbers. We couldn’t see the impact right away because the budgeted hiring period hadn’t started. But when it did the impact was visible immediately and we banked the savings. That’s business partnering 101!

Unfortunately, it turned out that the drilling rig itself became delayed, so the start-up budget ran over budget after all. Still, that didn’t take away from the savings we delivered. This was real money saved! After a few months we even got our pictures taken and had a news story on the frontpage of the intranet! 

What’s the learning? 

I’ve deducted much of the way I do business partnering from this impact case and a few others I was part of during my time in the US. Here are some of my overall thoughts. 

• Finance doesn’t need to come up with all the ideas, but we should facilitate the process.
• Finance doesn’t need to claim the benefit for ourselves, but rather help our business stakeholders meet or beat their targets.
• Business partnering is an end to end process that doesn’t stop when the decision is made.
• Business partners take ownership of getting the situation resolved. It might be it wasn’t me that got the idea of the workshop, but I immediately took ownership of it. 

I must’ve told this story 100 times by now, so it has also helped me improve my storytelling skills! It certainly also played a big role in landing my first real business partner job but that’s a different story for another time. Next time we’ll round off the series about my early career lessons with some of my biggest struggles as a business partner and what I learned from them.

What was your first impact case as a business partner? Tell your story and improve your storytelling skills while the rest of us get more success stories that we can use to fuel our efforts!

This was the ninth 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

Moving Finance From Bean Counters To Business Partners

Behind The Scenes Of Achieving A WD1 Month-End Close

If you want 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 40.000+ followers.