TomTom Finance - Getting better all the time

In 2021, TomTom Finance won a significant bet on ourselves: we were the fastest listed company in the Netherlands to publish our audited results for 2020! Looking back at an unprecedented year, this accomplishment counts as double. Like most companies in the world, we had to adapt to a whole new way of working. Almost overnight, our team changed its setup to work fully remotely. Despite this situation being new to most of us, we still managed to deliver impeccable results.

Becoming faster gives us purpose to keep improving, but it is not a goal in itself. A fast financial close signals that we are in control and run our business efficiently and effectively. It is an ambition, useful in driving other bold actions, like thoroughly reviewing and optimizing our processes, using the right tooling, and empowering our people to continuously learn and develop themselves.

So, what was behind our winning strategy? I’ll share a few key factors here.

1.?????Great process, great technology, great people

The “Great in…” program represents a vital framework to continually improve how we work. We lead multiple improvement efforts spanning three pillars of the program: process, technology, and people. Today more than ever, having a solid financial close process is a mandate. It enables quicker access to real-time information for all stakeholders. This, in turn, empowers faster decision-making for senior management, no matter their location. At the same, making use of best-in-class technology to enable processes is instrumental. And, undoubtedly, none of this would be possible without having great people on board, a bunch of enthusiasts who do not hesitate to experiment and learn from their mistakes and from each other. ??????

2.?????Communicating effectively

Effective communication is our holy grail. To better support our remote team, we improved communication between stakeholders involved in the process and gave them better insight into the close status by intensifying the use of our in-house tooling. We also matured in the way we look back at our past performance. We focused each retrospective on measuring outcomes and identifying areas where we can up our game.

3.?????Passionate persistence

A key ingredient of this success was that our goal was not set-and-forget. Our objective to continuously publish audited results faster has been long standing. And this is an approach we adopt in pretty much everything that we do: never stop fighting, till the fight is done.

What’s next?

Taking a moment to celebrate ourselves for having done something great is part of our culture. It fills us with passion and power to keep moving forward for the next challenge: to keep getting better all the time.?