RSS feedsMany FDs are proud of upgrading and installing new accounting technology into their business, cutting costs and producing better quality data. It clearly ticks the right boxes on their CV if they can get a financial IT system up-and-running.
Oliver Gritz, global CFO of the €14bn (£11.2bn) business DHL Express, admits that the company was not able to fully achieve this particular aim.
But for a business that runs across 220 countries, employs several thousand
accounting staff and only came into existence in its current form in 2006,
Gritz is actually delighted with how close it came to the target.
‘It’s been a very challenging period and I want to pay tribute to finance, which went through a tremendous period over the past 16 months ñ coming from nothing to building up a robust and solid financial framework that had to be conceptually sound and business relevant.’
The reason for Gritz’s pride is that the global transportation business is, as he describes it, a ‘hotch-potch’ of 40 acquisitions brought together by its owner Deutsche Post.
The group, which has long owned a share of DHL Express, took control of the business in 2002. In 2005, it brought on board US-based Airborne, and DHL Express ñ already a major business ñ became a giant. The Deutsche Post group itself dwarfs even DHL Express, posting Ä63bn revenue in 2007.
Strangely, DHL Express was effectively run as two separate businesses: the rest of the world, of which Gritz was CFO, and EMEA.
With two boards following their own strategies, they struggled to gain efficiencies that would normally be expected from a global business, such as centralised back-office functions.
‘We basically lost many of the synergies that would usually occur in a global business, of which a combined financial system is one, but also in other areas.
We used different production equipment in our hubs, different IT systems, different commercial processes, all synergies from a networked business managed as one ñ all that was lost.’
Reality, though, eventually bit hard, and management decided that integrating the financial IT systems would add value.
Gritz took on the global role and has spent 16 months trying to bring together its finances. Even though the task looming was great, combining the two businesses was ‘lucky timing’ for him as he thought he had reached the limit of what he could achieve in his previous role.
‘With two businesses with obvious conflicts, you can do only so much and you can waste a lot of time keeping both sets of stakeholders happy, but luckily it fell away and [my latest role] is a logical extension of the job I had before,’ explains Gritz.
Having admitted that some jurisdictions are still running on their own IT platforms, Gritz says the decision was pragmatic, but did not get in the way of the more important overall target of bringing them all on to a single ‘framework’.
‘I think we were quite successful to build a framework that was very good and not a compromise, but a good path through this jungle of conflicting goals.’
Express advice
With all his business experience, Gritz says that if younger members of the profession have a hankering for working in industry they should get involved as soon as possible in their career.
‘Make damn sure you get some real business experience early in your career to be taken seriously on whatever management board you’re on, so you don’t get into the position where “he’s talking and doesn’t have any clue how things are really working”.’
