My experiences of Industrial Training

It was 1999 or 2000 possibly when I started in a very small listed Swiss MNC in Pune as an Industrial Trainee. CFO cum Company Secretary was heading the finance department with 3 assistant managers under him. Overall it was team of about ten people.

I had given a short interview in January and joined in the month of March. It was going to be my first corporate finance experience after two years of hardcore audit experience in a mid-sized firm in Pune area. I was very excited and looking forward to a lot of learning through such excellent team of professionals.

The day I joined the company, I understood that CFO of the Company had already left the organization. The assistant manager – who had interviewed me – had resigned already and he was moving back to his native in a week’s time. Another AM had left India for an overseas assignment in HQ for one year. That left us with only one AM and no CFO.

Cherry on the top was that BaaN was implemented in that company effective 1st January and by the time I joined in March it was pretty much evident that things were not going as planned. There were multiple issues in the implementation. We needed all the hands we can get hold of. To free up others I was given the job of doing bank reconciliation in BaaN. So much for corporate experience I thought..

It was clear in a fortnight that we were not going anywhere in solving the situation in ERP implementation, we were running short of people and we were definitely missing the desperately needed leadership to combat the situation. The things were looking very bad for all of us … I wondered if I had made a grave mistake by opting for industrial training.

Then the things started to turn around. We had a new CFO and he calls me in his cabin and congratulates me on my past experience and being with the company in such difficult times. He had no hesitation is saying that I was senior to him in that company. He brought a Finance Manager from his earlier company and we had a complete team in a month’s time and things started looking up.

That’s when the real experience started for me. All of us worked for twelve hours a day for six days a week for one complete year and we were back to normal, issues and challenges in the ERP were resolved by the team in that year. Post that entire team used to leave exactly at 6 pm.

We understood the system very well in that one year.  We could find ways of resolving the issues outside if those issues were not possible to be resolved in the system. We could generate very complex reports by combining system generated reports and excel automations very quickly.

An excellent team with a remarkable leader brought a good turnaround and saved the day with commendable efforts. Our CFO even took up bank reconciliation personally when there was a desperate situation.

In that one year I literally devoted myself to learning the BaaN ERP. My growing knowledge of system allowed me to progress from ‘Bank Reco’ to ‘vendor reconciliation’ to passing correction ‘debit and credit notes’ (it was a privilege in terms of access rights at that time), then moving to pass closing journals for quarter-closing and eventually leading to facing Big4 auditors independently for my own areas.

The most memorable achievement was an automation which I achieved with the guidance of my boss (the finance manager) to get a ready schedule VI balance sheet, P&L along with all schedules with just one click of a button.

All of this in just one year…. So much for an industrial training! I was lucky indeed to have worked with such committed and fearless set of individuals.

Pradeep.Khot@Opulentia.in