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WWW.CFOSTUDIO.COM
3rd Quarter 2012
CFO CFO
2
Damian Finio
Chief Financial Officer, West-Ward Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of HIKMA
Larger
M
y recent career moves
have taken me backwards
in terms of company
size and revenue, yet
provided me with fantastic opportu-
nities for design and implemen-
tation of people, processes and
systems. I initiated each of these
career moves. However, with larger
companies continuing to reduce the
size of their finance departments,
it’s a trend that some of you may be
forced to encounter yourself or for
the people you recruit.
I benefited from sophisticated
operations at AstraZeneca ($34B
in revenues), transitioned toDaiichi
Sankyo ($12B in revenues), and now
findmyself at HIKMA ($1B in rev-
enues), wondering what knowledge
and experience I should bring with
me and what is better left behind.
While knowledge and experi-
ence get you the job, it is often this
same knowledge and experience
that can leave you frustrated and dis-
appointed if you don’t adjust your
expectations to your new environ-
ment. Smaller companies simply do
not have the means to invest in the
people, processes, and systems that
their larger competitors do, yet the
complexity of their business models
is arguably comparable.
All of the companies where I
worked are multinational firms with
headquarters outside of the U.S.
competing in the regulated pharma-
ceutical industry. Each uses SAP, has
manufacturing facilities around the
world, sells inmultiple countries, and
employs thousands of people with
varying cultural backgrounds and
skill sets. Yet the quality and quantity
of finance staff, maturity of financial
processes, and success in exploiting
systems varies.There are more than
likely a host of reasons why this is the
case, but surely some component of
this dynamic must be attributable to
to Smaller Organizations
WHAT TOBRING
ANDWHAT
TO LEAVE BEHIND
From
Transitioning