General Manager
Maersk
Total years of experience :20 years, 5 Months
Maersk GSC is the 100% outsourcing shared service centre of the Maersk group and services all the Business units of Maersk Group viz. Maersk Line, APM Terminals, Maersk Tankers, Maersk Oil etc. The SSC’s have a overall strength of 13000 employees with 6 main centres spread across India, Philippines and China. My role is In Mumbai, which has an employee base of 3000 employees. The role expectations being:
• Responsible for developing, controlling and managing budgets, financial plans and projections of the Centre. Owner of all non-business related costs
• Review and develop commensurate internal controls and financial procedures in line with changing dynamics of the business.
• Ensure timeliness, accuracy, and usefulness of financial and management reporting and oversee the preparation and communication of monthly, quarterly and annual financial statements for consolidations and internal stakeholders.
• Ensure legal and regulatory compliance regarding all functions and Coordinate audits and proper filing of tax returns.
• Drive change initiatives as required to improve efficiencies, build cost leadership and execute on business commitments.
• Leadership, planning, project coordination and management for the development of a cost-effective department while concurrently facilitating efficient operations to meet current and future business requirements.
• Build and maintain a strong functional team through effective recruiting, training, coaching, team building and succession planning. Prepare and participate in the preparation of staff development plans for each functional team member. Assess the skills and skill levels necessary to achieve work objectives. Demonstrate positive leadership of distributed team members to include ongoing direction, coaching, and career development.
Hapag-Lloyd is a Global Shipping Container Line, ranked 5th in the world amongst shipping lines. Hapag-Lloyd has its Off-shoring setup based out of Mumbai and Chennai thru a 350 member strong team for carrying out its off-shored functions. Registered with STPI, it’s headquartered in Mumbai and also has its operations in Chennai. Hapag-Lloyd has transitioned 1) Finance functions of Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Agency Accounting, Demurrage Accounting and Revenue Audits (90 strong Headcount) and 2) Documentation related functions like creation of Export Bills of Lading, Rate agreement Publishing, Tariff Publications, Web Portal Content Publishing (260 Strong headcount) of its various offices spread in Asia, Europe and America’s regions through SAP and FIS systems of Hapag-Lloyd.
Role: Director - Business Administration heading the functions of Corporate Finance, Corporate HR, Administration activities of Mumbai and Chennai. The responsibilities handled during this tenure include:
Corporate Finance, HR and Administration responsibilities:
• Planning and directing the Finance, Taxation, Human Resources, Administration and Company Secretarial functions of India GSC’s, ensure tax compliance within local framework and set optimum transfer pricing structure from group perspective
• Develop short, medium, and long term financial plans and projections in line with Business Aspirations
• Oversee the accounting department to ensure proper maintenance of all accounting systems and function; ensure records systems are maintained in accordance with IFRS and IGAAP requirements.
• Ensure legal and regulatory compliance regarding all functions and Coordinate audits and proper filing of tax returns.
• Identify opportunities at all levels to reduce costs and drive measures to ensure all cost saving measures are effective without impacting the performance of the organization.
• Support creation and management of talent, assess performance, devise development plans and motivate the team to build a strong and effective financial management team
• Support the BPI team in creation of a Risk Mitigation Plan to ensure all current and future risks are identified and mitigated thereby ensuring protection of assets, reducing impact of unforeseen losses and enhancing internal controls on financial transactions.
• Establish and maintain strong relationships with Stakeholders, Auditors & Banks.
As Director, I was responsible for managing the entire off-shored functions in India thru its centres in Mumbai and Chennai. I reported to the Managing Director and have been instrumental in transitioning the entire documentation function from Europe to India (150 strong headcount) during my tenure. The other responsibilities are detailed hereafter
• Build Strategy, structure, staffing and processes that leverages the Company Quality objectives and goals.
• Working collaboratively with offsite locations and regional offices to anticipate and understand customer expectations and satisfaction levels and translate that process into process improvements / changes in order to improve effectiveness.
• Responsible for Planning, Allocating and controlling processes and resources to ensure quality deliverables within prescribed timelines and functional budgets.
• Providing leadership through guiding, monitoring and integrating the efforts of Process Leads and the respective teams.
• Build Succession Planning Members and ensure continuity. Identify Team Leaders and Managers with the potential to grow within the organization and ensure they are given the right coaching, guidance and challenging assignments.
• Conduct Operational reviews for existing gaps and opportunities on cost and quality Front. Risk Management from BCP perspective.
• Revisiting SOPs and Key internal control steps in the Process with GBS team (Global Business Systems team)
• Cost budgeting and monitoring performance against actual.
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MOL India is a 100% subsidiary of Mitsui O.S.K Lines Ltd, rated at World No. 7 in Shipping Lines. MOL is operating throughout the world and is the market leader in the LPG Transportation business, apart from leading in other diversified interests as Cargo Movement, Break Bulk, Oil Transportation, Port Terminals etc. Initially I was part of the Corporate Finance team which dealt with matters of Taxation, Secretarial Routines, Consolidations, MIS reporting and Banking. Subsequently I was promoted to a higher role of managing the Liner Agency Business side which entailed Invoicing, Collections, Remittances, Working Capital Management of Shippers/ Importers who availed of Agency Services.
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