Ameena Ziauddin, FCMA, CGMA, focused on engineering in her early career, but she knew that financial acumen was going to be a required skillset as part of her long-term plan.
Ziauddin, named early this year as president and managing director of Norfolk Foods in Sri Lanka, grew up around the business – it’s one that her parents founded together.
In this FM podcast episode, Ziauddin discusses the keys to joint ventures, how to foster innovation, why simply having a chat over a cup of coffee can “change everything”, and advice for the next generation of finance professionals.
She also talks about the value of persistence. “Just because you hit one hurdle or one barrier doesn’t mean you stop,” she said. “You have to keep going.”
What you’ll learn from this episode:
- Why memories such as being “on the roof” stand out to Ziauddin.
- The ways that Norfolk Foods emphasises and values innovation.
- How Ziauddin’s exposure to several industries has helped improve efficiencies and implement cost-saving initiatives.
- The value of having “a simple chat over a cup of coffee”.
- Ziauddin’s advice for the next generation of finance professionals.
Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:
— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.
Transcript
Amato: Welcome to the FM podcast. This is Neil Amato, an editor with FM. Today’s episode is a discussion with a CIMA-qualified company president in Sri Lanka, Ameena Ziauddin. We’re going to discuss innovation, developing strategic partnerships, and mentoring the next generation of leaders. Ameena, first, welcome to the podcast. We’re glad to have you on.
Ziauddin: Thank you so much for having me, Neil.
Amato: First, you are president of Norfolk Foods, a company founded by your father. Tell us a little bit about Norfolk Foods and its primary markets.
Ziauddin: Norfolk Foods is actually now 30 years old this year and is actually set up by both my parents. They were in the UK for 25 years. My father is a food scientist who, when he left the UK, was development director of Bernard Matthews [Foods], one of the UK’s leading turkey producers. My mother was a Wall’s- and Unilever-trained microbiologist. When they came back, this is actually their fifth job together, and they really wanted to bring their experience and their know-how back to Sri Lanka.
My father had five international patents in the industry at the time, and he really wanted to change the marketplace in Sri Lanka.
Norfolk Foods is a frozen food company. We supply all the major hotels and restaurants in Sri Lanka and in the Maldives. Major brands trust us with their name, and we’re also in the supermarkets in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Right now, we’ve diversified our product range, so we offer chilled dips, frozen bakery products, along with the frozen meat, vegetable, and fish products that we already offer.
We’ve also newly launched a Sri Lankan-inspired vegan range. These have helped us grow our reach and enter new marketplaces locally and internationally. Obviously, one of the major and core things we are going to talk about as well is that seven years ago we entered a partnership with CPF Thailand, and two years ago we entered a joint venture partnership with CPF India to start CP Norfolk India.
Amato: Thank you for that introduction. What about the business model for the company? What has been the focus over the years?
Ziauddin: We’ve always been a frozen food supplier, and now we’re turning into more of a food solution provider. Whereas anything, anyone from a hotel or restaurant can order anything from us and we’ll try and make sure that their need is met. Ours is a manufacturing company, obviously, with entrepreneurial spirit as well as being a family business. When you have those things, we kind of focus on the product being of the highest quality to meet the diverse and varying needs of the customer.
This model ensures that we have really quick response times, quick decision-making. We also emphasize staff wellbeing. Nothing leaves the factory without one of the directors trying the products. In the reallocation, if one of the three of us aren’t there, it’ll be one of our senior management and, therefore, that gives us confidence that we can always say the product is of the highest quality when it comes out.
Amato: You touched on the scientific background of your parents, and one area of strength for Norfolk Foods is research and development, innovation, technology. Tell me a little more of the background on that and how your background as an engineer has supported it.
Ziauddin: Innovation and R&D is the core in [development and engineering] of Norfolk Foods. We drive this belief through all our staff members throughout the whole organization, and we always encourage them to think out of the box. I think it comes from the top. You see my dad will take an envelope, draw something on the back of it, try to explain a process, and then everyone learns from that.
Then if you see your boss doing it, obviously you’re going to learn from that. We develop hundreds of products a month where sometimes the customer will tell us what to do, or we do it ourselves, and we feel it’s really important to be first-to-market. Having an agile team really helps that way. How we also develop innovation throughout the organization is we have innovation awards.
That is, every department can apply using whatever initiatives that they’ve done have been successful. Example, an engineer developed a circuit that otherwise would have been imported from China, and that saved the company half a million rupees. Those things are obviously rewarded and celebrated and, therefore, encourage others to do the same.
We have an engineer who has worked with us for the last 30 years. He’s actually not a qualified engineer, but we call him “the machine whisperer” because he can tell what’s going on in a machine by just listening to it, and he can develop any machine if you show him a video. That type of talent is really inspiring to others in the company, and that has led to the engineering team developing quite a few machines in-house to meet our requirements.
As an engineer — I’ve always been interested in engineering since I was a child. I would climb on the roof with my dad and fix the antenna and fix my teacher’s pens in class without doing any work, that sort of thing. But I was always exposed to different manufacturing facilities, not just food, and I think that helped bring a different perspective back to Norfolk Foods.
With that and experience in the apparel industry or the chemical industry and in hospitality, you as an engineer think with what you have — like, find the solution with what is right in front of you. I think having a bird’s-eye view with Norfolk Foods did help me bring some of that perspective back. I was able to bring in cost-saving initiatives, improve efficiencies, and help with innovation.
One of our new product lines that we launched as soon as I joined is now one of our most successful products. It’s called the Kochchi Bites. I think just making sure that the team is comfortable enough to be able to be innovative and also making sure that culture is always in place really does help.
Amato: That’s great. Now, one thing I don’t know: How long have you been with Norfolk Foods?
Ziauddin: I have now been with Norfolk Foods 12 years.
Amato: Twelve years, great. Over the years, both before you got there and during your tenure, the company has engaged in several strategic partnerships. You touched on them. One notable one is with CPF Thailand or CP Foods, which is a major food conglomerate. What do you think is the key to developing such partnerships?
Ziauddin: I think one thing that we’ve always spoken about is being good at what you do and being passionate about it. If you have a good product that does the talking for itself, you don’t have to talk for it. I think that is possibly one of the easiest ways for having the strategic partnerships come into play because people come looking for you, like CP invested in us for our technology and our know-how.
Whenever one of their international officers try our products, they’re so shocked it’s from Sri Lanka. One, they didn’t even know CP had any partnerships in Sri Lanka, and two, they were like, “Whoa, we didn’t even know Sri Lanka does food manufacturing.” We’re like, “Here we are.” We’re known for our tea, we’re known for our apparel, so we have to change that mindset as well.
But I think integrity and also being transparent in your business ethics does help create trust with your potential partners because this is almost like two companies merging together, almost getting married, right, so you would need to have that mutual trust that comes into play.
And, looking for partners with complimentary strengths. We’ve had three different partners over Norfolk Foods like 30 years, and one thing we’ve learned is if someone is in the same industry with you, it’s much easier because they understand the pitfalls. They understand the method to the madness as well. They know when things are going well and things are going badly. An example with CP now, they’re in the same industry, but they’re so much bigger than us, and they’re all over the world. So we bring the products, and they bring us the marketplaces.
Amato: You talked about how people will find you if you’re good, and that makes sense. But how about how do you go out and get those relationships started, pursue those partnerships? What’s the difference there?
Ziauddin: You’re right, getting yourself out there is very important to see what’s available, networking.
I think having a simple chat over a cup of coffee with someone could change everything.
I think taking those opportunities. I think we’ve had so many almost random conversations with people and then turns out to be, that’s an opportunity right there. Why didn’t we think of that? Then that snowballs into, OK, let me call this person, let me see if that person knows this person. In the day and age now of LinkedIn, where everyone is connected globally and you can get your message across quite easily, I think if you are interested in doing partnerships, you should really get your name and product out there.
And also perseverance. I think we’ve had many failed negotiations and potential partnerships over the year. As a family-owned company, we’ve tried and failed quite a few times. Even our first partner, who was a more of an entrepreneur, he came to the factory. He did a factory visit, and he just wasn’t interested. His face was just blank, and deal advisory people would just say, “I’m really sorry, I don’t think this is going to work out. Just doesn’t seem interested.” My mom was like, no. She was like, “Can you please try the products?” He’s like, “No, I’m late. I have to go.”
She said, “Please just sit down and sample some of the products that we have.” That changed his mind. So he ate them and he said, “This is so much better than what I buy for my hotels. How much do you want?”
I think not giving up is so important. Just because you hit one hurdle or one barrier doesn’t mean you stop. You have to keep going, and I would also say involve professionals. There are people whose names, I don’t think I should really mention, but there are bodies of deal advisories who do know there are potential investors out there looking. There are potential other companies looking for partnerships. Just speak to people because you never know what conversation is going to change.
Amato: That’s true. You mentioned networking, you mentioned having that cup of coffee, taking time to talk to people. How did the COVID-19 pandemic change networking?
Ziauddin: Because there wasn’t any.
Amato: Exactly. How do you do it now?
Ziauddin: I think people are slowly getting back out there. I think, especially in our generation where people sometimes missed that social interaction. I think we got used to hiding behind the screen. We got used to just meeting people on a Teams call or a Zoom call and then never actually physically meeting them, and we were OK with that. But I think over the last maybe two, three years, people have realized actually that we need that human interaction now. People are finding it hard.
I’m involved in quite a few networking events, and people do come saying, look, we are looking for that connection with people again and trying to see like-minded individuals and trying to learn from people by actually sitting in front of them or standing in front of them, having a physical compensation. I think people are slowly getting back to it.
Amato: Even though we’re not having that cup of coffee in person. I thought that’s really important because you’re right. It’s totally different when you can connect with someone actually in the same room.
Ziauddin: Actually, it’s funny enough, even our CGMA classes that we did. We had a session with someone from CIMA and CIMA Sri Lanka in person for a week. Our group got really close, and there’s only 10 or 12 of us. But really close. We have a WhatsApp group. We meet every few months.
Amato: That’s good. We’ll get back to networking in a little bit. I want to ask a little bit more about your background. We’ve talked some about your engineering. What made you interested in becoming a CIMA-qualified management accountant?
Ziauddin: Should I give you you the Asian daughter answer and be like, “My mother wanted me to”? Uh, no, joking [laughter]. It was always something that I had tried to do. I had tried to do it in university. I had tried to do it after my master’s. And just the timing — because I felt like to be a well-rounded person within, as I knew I would always come back eventually to Sri Lanka. I always knew that I would come back eventually and join the family business. That was always in my life plan, I guess, and if I was going to take over, I would need to know or have the right skills.
One of them was being OK, I need to know my numbers, I need to know how to talk to my CFO and actually understand what he’s saying and not look completely blank when he shows me the monthly profit or the monthly balance sheets. I thought it was very important to be able to understand, have those conversations and also, obviously, things like getting a deal or even discussing deals, having that right knowledge from CIMA plays a huge part.
Amato: We touched on networking. Tell me some about service on the Sri Lanka Institute of Directors, specifically the institute’s Young Directors Forum.
Ziauddin: Currently, I’m the chair of the Young Directors Forum, and what we are trying to do is make the younger generation ready for the boardroom. You do get a lot of people who are just about to become CEO, just about to become [managing director] or already are directors and just trying to help them own their skills, learn from each other. Because, obviously, everyone is going through the same thing, post-pandemic, post-financial crisis, post-political crisis. What has everyone learned? I think the one thing in Sri Lanka that we have seen is peer-to-peer networking, peer-to-peer learning has been one of the biggest sources of, I would say, development within our generation.
That was the sort of thing — I was saying having a cup of coffee with someone. If you could do that with your peers and having to learn, how did you navigate through not having fuel for your company for the last week, or how do you navigate through people going on strike. How do you navigate things? It’s crisis after crisis, but it’s a huge learning opportunity.
The Young Directors Forum does a lot of networking events. We do a lot of fireside chats with mentor-type individuals in the industry, so that you can also learn from people who’ve been through it and people who have grown massive businesses, who are leading businesses and who are very blunt about their advice to the next generation, which is great. I mean, then that’s what we need. So, yeah, that’s some of the things we do.
Amato: What advice would you give to the next generation of accounting and finance professionals?
Ziauddin: I think even the next generation, things are going to change. I think things are changing very rapidly. I think we, in our generation, had a bit of a blip in a sense of development-wise where everything kind of stood still for a few years and then took a few years to garner momentum.
But I feel like the next generation, things are going to move so much faster. I would always say stay on the top of your game. Never take it for granted that you’ve learned something or done something, and always keep your eyes, ears, and your mind open because you need to absorb as much knowledge, as much information as you possibly can to stay ahead of the game.
Amato: Ameena, this has been great. I really have enjoyed the conversation. Thank you very much.
Ziauddin: Thank you so much. Thanks, Neil.
