Zinnia Tanzina Huq, Finance Director, GSK Bangladesh on the Ins and Outs of Finance
In a traditional organization, major departments made up of Finance, Human Resources, and Marketing/Sales, work separately in a silo approach with little to no work interaction among them. This often leads to a segmented organization with differing and even competing goals, thus hindering the business from reaching its optimal potential.
The Cross Functional Summit held in the capital’s BICC, on January this year, aimed to address the issue of lack of collaboration among departments in an organization and propose multiple ways to increase teamwork and ensure sustainable growth. The summit brought key professionals, academicians and practitioners from multiple disciplines including Finance, Human Resources and Marketing/ Sales. The dialogue held in the one-day summit on 16 January, gave light to numerous issues faced by a traditional large firm and laid out approaches to tackle them through collaborative solutions.
Ms. Zinnia Tanzina Huq FCMA is the Finance Director at GlaxoSmithKline Bangladesh Ltd., a Member at The Institute of Cost & Management Accountants of Bangladesh, and a Member at Institute of Internal Auditors Bangladesh. She is on the Board of Directors at GlaxoSmithKline Bangladesh Ltd. She received her undergraduate degree from the Institute of Business Administration (Dhaka).
Ms. Huq took the stage to give an informative Keynote on the ins and outs of Finance and the role it plays in encouraging collaboration in an organization. “Who are the Finance people?” asked Ms. Huq who has 14 years of professional finance experience in multinational corporates. Finance people are usually referred to as the Accountants or bookkeepers who generate periodical historical reports. Ms. Huq emphasized the importance of a balanced scorecard to bind all functional units of the organization. With Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP softwares) coming in, the age-old bureaucratic technique of book keeping is being replaced and Finance is becoming a major driver of digitization in businesses.
“It is not easy to become visionaries,” remarked Ms. Huq, “what stops Finance people to become visionaries?” According to research, it takes a Finance person 7 years of professional experience to contribute in his\her field. The reason why it is difficult to deliver through collaboration lies in the conflict-harmony and deconstructive-constructive continuum. Organizations can be segmented into undergoing disintegration due to too much deconstructive conflict, stagnation due to deconstructive harmony, exasperation due to constructive conflict or collaboration due to constructive harmony. The aim for any organization is to have a collaborative culture through constructive harmony.
Ms. Huq put forward three areas of collaboration for Finance, namely in strategic awareness, commerciality and leadership. The major gaps in communication arises because Finance personnel says one thing, while people from other departments think something else. Expectations between Finance people and non-Finance people also differ.
The Finance expert revisited some of the transformations changing the world. The impact of digitization, as per Ms. Huq is that the velocity of the business world is changing and transparency is increasing at an accelerated rate. “Finance will be shaping business velocity and transparency,” Ms. Huq ended.
