Continuous learning is crucial both for financial leaders’ careers and to help organisations navigate uncertain times. In this Q&A, three China-based finance leaders share their own learning priorities and the new skills they are developing within their teams.
“As a finance executive, I deeply understand the importance of continuous learning,” said Jun Qi, FCMA, CGMA. Qi is CFO of Shanghai Bloks Technology Group, which has Chinese-style building blocks as its core business.
Strategic finance and digital tool-based training are the top priorities for Shanghai Bloks Technology Group’s finance team, she said. Enhancing the finance team’s digital skills is also a priority for Lu Zhao, FCMA, CGMA, the CFO at Ruiyi Optoelectronic Devices in Guangzhou city. Ruiyi Optoelectronic Devices focuses on producing photoelectric components for liquid crystal displays typically used in smartphones, computer monitors, and instrument panels. Zhao is also head of the company’s robotic process automation (RPA) development centre.
Digital transformation of the finance team also tops Frank Xu’s training agenda. Xu, FCMA, CGMA, is CFO at KY Limited, a multi-billion yuan company in Yiwu, a city known for having the world’s largest “small commodities” wholesale market. KY focuses on cartoon “trading cards” and collectibles manufacturing, board game design, and stationery supplies.
Here are their responses to FM’s questions, edited for length and clarity.
What three pieces of advice would you give finance professionals starting their careers?
Jun Qi: Firstly, I suggest you set career goals and develop plans to achieve them. Making plans helps you manage your time and resources and complete tasks.
Secondly, develop your strategic thinking abilities. Gain a comprehensive understanding of the business model, market environment, and competitive landscape of your company and the industry to provide decision-makers with timely and accurate financial information and insightful recommendations.
Finally, improve your presentation and communication skills. Make your opinions easier to understand and easier to accept and recognise. Finance needs to influence other key business departments and key personnel as much as possible because high-quality growth of a company can only be achieved when everyone has the same desire.
Lu Zhao: Continuously learn and accumulate experience to become an expert in the financial field. Everyone has a list of key competencies. If there is nothing on the list, try to add items.
Improve your digital skills. Learn about robotic process automation [RPA] software that can automate repetitive processes quickly at low cost. Of course, you may also learn some underlying programming techniques, such as Python, and about tools to clean, sort, and visualise data, such as Microsoft Power BI.
Also, study harder than anyone else. Persist to do hard work and strive for perfection. How much you give determines how much you gain. There will be a return.
Frank Xu: The first thing in my mind is to aim high, set challenging goals, and make a plan to achieve them. Find inspiration in role models who have achieved what you want to achieve in your career.
Also, be a lifetime learner. Reserve time for learning and personal growth, even during late nights or daily commutes.
Last but not least is to keep active. Regular exercise and physical activity can enhance wellbeing and support your career.
My advice to starters is to use SWOT analysis to plan your career — consider your personal strengths and how they align with the demands of the job. I believe the finance industry in the future will focus increasingly on using big data, analytics, and predictive modelling to inform business strategy and decisions. If these are the areas where you have a comparative edge, you will have a head start.
What are the most recent formal training courses or conferences or webinars that you have undertaken? And how are they relevant to your current role?
Qi: I recently attended two training sessions: One about conducting effective post-project analysis and one about presentation skills.
Conducting a structured, learning-oriented post-game analysis allows us to summarise and share lessons learned, identify areas for improvement, sum up rules, improve processes, and enhance strategic execution to enable the company to grow. We create a closed loop that allows us to convert our experiences into ability.
I also attended a training course on presentation skills. The goal was to deepen my understanding of how different methods, propositions, and perspectives help us convey valuable information, influence key business departments and personnel, and better support the high-quality growth of the company.
Zhao: I recently attended a meeting on how our group can use digital processes to increase efficiency and reduce enterprise costs by 10% in all of the group’s departments.
Our finance team has developed, operated, and maintained low-code RPA. As the person in charge of Ruiyi Optoelectronic Devices’ RPA development centre in China, I proposed to train developers and business analysts in all departments to expand the use of RPA and reduce costs and improve efficiency in the whole group.
We introduced the first RPA project in September 2021. So far, 116 processes have come online, and Ruiyi Optoelectronic Devices just finished the fourth RPA advanced development and training [course] on process optimisation. RPA can be a great complement to a “bloated system” and can be a good helper for applications that cannot be directly connected, such as the tax office website and customs website. We also encourage our employees to use Microsoft’s Power BI. It makes reports more visual and easier to use.
The integration of finance and business is getting better and better as the use of data improves and every step of the value chain is represented in numbers. Data is associated with important control points of working capital, which improves the efficiency of financial operation.
Xu: A meaningful roundtable session by AICPA & CIMA on The Future of Finance. As the COVID-19 pandemic comes to an end, we’re facing unprecedented challenges. It’s crucial for finance leaders to be equipped with the necessary tools to navigate these uncertain times. The CFOs who attended the session offered valuable insights on how to build a strong finance team that can help organisations emerge stronger and more resilient. And instead of hearing one or two people talk, the CFOs learned a lot from peers with differing firsthand experiences and points of view.
What’s the most important training for your team? And why?
Qi: Firstly, strategic finance training can help my team to improve strategic thinking and business acumen, which enables team members to provide high-quality financial recommendations.
Secondly, training that can help my team turn business into data and the data into models. Different levels of data and models — from fine-grained and accurate raw data to a range of industry-specific finance and business indicators and reports and internal and external value-chain analysis — can be used to connect different users and deliver different values.
Finally, tool-based training can help my team master new tools and applications, such as model training. For example, AI chatbots such as ChatGPT are becoming very popular. AI may not necessarily replace finance professionals, but finance professionals need to use tools well, possess the ability to train AI, and improve their work efficiency to provide better support for the company.
Zhao: My team focuses on digital skills, which include digital thinking and digital tools such as RPA, Python, Power BI, and VBA in Excel. The specific learning path is through online or offline courses, peer sharing meetings, and enterprise visits.
RPA is a process of transformation and financial digitalisation. With the deepening of our digital transformation, in the future, RPA will be used as a standard configuration for finance personnel.
The shortage of and competition for talent makes it difficult to expand RPA projects. Ruiyi Optoelectronic Devices needs to cultivate digital talent: management talent who understand digital technology; digital professionals who can build basic digital environments and develop digital products; and digital application talent to improve the work efficiency. That includes RPA business analysts, RPA developers, RPA solution architects, and RPA process operators.
Ruiyi Optoelectronic Devices has already established an RPA special personnel allowance to retain talent and plans to improve its RPA development incentive mechanism.
Xu: We emphasise three topics among our training sessions:
- How to develop our understanding of the evolving business and capture the key operational components in our management accounting models. This is to make sure we have the foundation to provide relevant and valuable service to our business leaders.
- How to be a strong leader — not only sharpening management skills but also promoting digital transformation in the organisation. We know process optimisation is challenging. Finance should play a key role, given our expertise and positioning.
- How to configure and maintain our ERP systems, which are fundamental in establishing corporate governance and compliance.
How do you encourage learning in your team? Do you use formal learning and informal learning (such as peer-to-peer learning, reading journals, or relevant social media)?
Qi: Continuous learning is the only way to keep up with the times. Therefore, establishing a self-driven learning organisation is necessary to better support the development of the company. I encourage team members to continue learning by:
- Providing training opportunities: We organise or recommend industry or cross-disciplinary training, seminars, conferences, etc. to expose team members to the latest knowledge and trends and broaden their horizons.
- Encouraging self-directed learning: We provide resources and tools for self-directed learning, encourage team members to seek learning opportunities on their own, and give them support and guidance.
- Promoting knowledge sharing: We encourage team members to share their learning achievements and insights, which can be done through internal communication platforms, team meetings, exchange and sharing sessions, etc.
- Offering mentorship programs: We provide mentorship programs for team members, allowing experienced individuals to guide and mentor younger members, helping them grow rapidly.
Zhao: Ruiyi Optoelectronic Devices focuses on internal talent training with external recruitment as a supplement. By supporting employees’ in-service learning and development, employee experience can be enhanced, thus stimulating their enthusiasm and motivation and contributing to the improvement of company performance. Developing talent internally can also reduce risks and costs of recruitment by limiting external hiring to a few basic positions.
Management should clearly outline career ladders in expertise areas and a feasible timeline for completing each career ladder. Management leaders should also assist employees to establish the career progression concept of “progressive learning and leapfrog development”.
It takes about two years of work and study in a certain area to achieve proficiency. If expecting to learn new knowledge and skills, one should expand into a new area of work rather than staying in the same job role. By taking advantage of Ruiyi Optoelectronic Devices’ college, employees can have various learning scenarios.
For example, they can join a problem-solving group, a value-creation or a strategic management project, a job rotation programme, or an internal instructor team; become a member of an expert panel; share best practice; or get involved in instructor-led or online learning.
Xu: We make sure they understand the importance of learning, even before they join the team. In recruitment interviews, I discuss with the candidates their learning plans, such as CPA, DMA [Digital Management Accounting Certificate], or CGMA.
Our company-level training platform is an integral part of the professional development once you’re part of the team. We track the time and scores of our team members and celebrate those “T-shaped persons” who excel in various nonfinance modules.
We also promote leading by example. I often share with them my podcasts and comments and ask for their views. Our team members are encouraged to stay up to date on the latest trends and technologies.
— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Oliver Rowe at Oliver.Rowe@aicpa-cima.com.
