A New Payroll Shared Services System

22/6/2013

Just recently, the payroll department for each affiliate Janssen, J&J Medical and J&J Consumer have been discarded to make the switch to a shared services payroll system. From what I have learnt in management accounting there are many benefits to shared services such as the improved quality management of standardised services and the focus on internal customer needs. Not only that, economies of scale can be achieved and there is also the reduction in the duplication of services.

However as a result of the transition from the old payroll system to the new shared services it meant that there was no proper system of payslip distribution. As the shared services team sits across the road each month’s payslips for all employees at Janssen (about 200+) were handed to finance to distribute to the rest of our departments. This proved to be a massive task as they were not all grouped in the correct teams and we did not know who the manager of each team was either. The process of distribution ended up taking almost a week as I had to firstly send a company-wide email asking for people to come collect it from me or they could have it posted to their addresses if they liked. For those who did not come to collect them I had to go find them in the building. Many people were also annoyed at this distribution system as it was messy, envelopes could go missing and the only way to reassure them was to communicate with the new payroll team that another system of distribution was necessary such as electronically via email.

However one good thing did come out of this task and that was I met so many new people from different departments and not only was that a lot of fun but I learnt more about what other people’s roles were as part of the organisational whole and it helped me relate names to faces when people requested work from me. All in all it was a great learning experience for me!

Lunch & Learns

13/6/2013

One of our commercial analysts gave a lunch and learn class where over a catered lunch, she talked about one of the many opportunities available at Janssen to do an internal audit for an overseas affiliate. She talked about her experience as an internal auditor which was less like investigating them and more like working with them to improve their internal processes and compliance. She detailed some of the benefits of taking up this opportunity such as learning efficient practices and processes from the audited affiliate and then being able to bring it to our firm and improve our processes. It showed how valuable it was to share information between overseas affiliates and the value it could bring to various J&J firms worldwide. Some of the topics we discussed included how we could implement electronic reconciliations instead of continuing to have paper backups. It was a great eye-opener and a wonderful way to learn about the opportunities that were available to employees at J&J.

This was one of our new initiatives following our Health Organisation Survey, to have more lunch and learn classes so people can share the knowledge they have learned. 

Induction Packs

4/6/2013

With new people constantly coming in I was asked to put together an induction pack for a new management accountant and this was a really good way for me to get to know the induction process from the side that’s organising it. It included communicating with IT to set up our new employee’s ID number, username, laptop, access to SAP and TM1 as well as the security personnel to order her security pass and nametag. It was also a good way to reaffirm what I knew about the company as I took her for a site visit around both Janssen and J&J Medical.

The induction process was a great opportunity to get to know our new employee and make her feel welcome to the team. If there was another opportunity to welcome someone else to the team I’d definitely do it again!

Role Clarity Meeting

30/5/2013

Role clarity is one of the issues we have been faced with due to the high staff turnover levels and it was at this meeting that my reporting and planning manager helped our team clarify our responsibilities for our monthly and quarterly duties. Having this meeting helped us to individually solidify what was expected from us so that no duties were left undone or wastefully duplicated. Another reason for this meeting was due to the lack of resources we currently have so some tasks of leaving employees had to be split, reassigned and due to us temporarily not have a financial controller who approves all our recs and monthly invoices it meant that we had to work around our financial director who is only occasionally in the office so this meant we’d have to manage our time effectively to get tasks done in time for him to sign documents during the time he was in-office.

This once again shows some of the difficulties associated with short-term employees and the constant turnover meant blurred responsibilities and inflexible working arrangements due to the lack of resources. 

GCC (Global Corporate Challenge)

22/5/2013

Vitality is our health department that organises health checks, vaccines, fitness activities, the gym and much, much more. This year J&J is participating in the Global Corporate Challenge where we create groups of 7, each get a pedometer and walk as much as we can everyday to compete in a race around a virtual world.

I believe this is one of the best initiatives and events for an organisation to participate in because it really gets employees energized, with a healthy competitive spirit to try and be fitter and healthier. Not only does it help people with their health, people work more efficiently when they feel fit and it also generates lively goss and stories about people’s weekend activity plans and strategies to beat competing teams. I was randomly appointed team captain and made plans to motivate my team making miniature jersey stands with everyone’s names and sending out a welcome email with details about admin issues. Being a team captain can sometimes be quite a job in itself because the majority of us are quite competitive and therefore enter in the number of steps we take daily but there are others who aren't as timely so it was my responsibility for chasing people up about it. However that once again was hard to go about because obviously their work takes priority number one so I thought just sending out a reminder to everyone would be a good idea and that seems to have helped instead of approaching an individual directly about it. It’s a lot of fun co-ordinating, it helps build our teamwork in finance and I personally love the challenge to try and reach 10,000 steps a day!

Learning to make Macros

17/5/2013

While updating the monthly Travel & Entertainment Departmental Expenses reports which are eventually distributed amongst all the departments at Janssen I found the work quite repetitive, tiring and completely mindless because it involved a lot of formatting and pasting special values. Manually it’d take a person a good half of their day and that's if everything goes smoothly and there are no variances in the reports. I found it quite tedious and time-consuming so my mind wondered aimlessly trying to find another method of approaching this task. My mind wondered to macros and I remembered the co-op excel training we had earlier on in the year and decided to have a go at it. After a two hours of fiddling with formulas and script writing as well as help from google I was able to come up with two separate macros for the formatting and pasting of special values. It took a while but I preserved and I was left feeling satisfied that I’d saved myself a lot of time in the future.

What I learnt from this was that even though at the beginning I thought they’d be no way I’d be able to write a macro because I had very limited experience, sometimes I just have to give it a go anyway, persevere through it and I might surprise myself in the end. Also, I learnt that sometimes it could be worth it taking a few hours initially to develop something that you’d be able to do next time in the press of a button so macros are definitely your friend!

Intercompany

5/5/2013

Intercompany has been one of my major tasks at J&J, recurring monthly with larger charge-outs on a quarterly basis. I work with my Management accountant manager to get these done and it involves  lot of communication between us and the people who need to get these charges out as well as between us and our intercompany partners in Manila who process these debit memo requests on our behalf. Intercompany charges refers to any charge that Janssen-Cilag has expensed for the purpose of another affiliate and hence the cost should not be borne by us and vice versa. Every month we have a deadline to send our team in Manila invoices to charge various affiliates and usually when someone in the business wants to charge another affiliate they came to me where I will draft a debit memo with the backup attached and send it to our intercompany team. If this deadline is missed then we make an accrual for it so our expenses will be correctly reflected in our books.

On a quarterly basis I will also charge out corporate expenses relating to people who do work for another affiliate but are working at Janssen and are in our payroll system. Each have their own cost centre and it involves me talking to that person’s assistant and agreeing upon the amount that is to be charged out and then approved by our Financial Director. Similarly charges that go out to the region are requested quarterly and are cross-checked with our regional partners in Belgium. The last component part of intercompany are Global Clinical Operations (GCO) charges which are expenses incurred for projects that have been undergone by Janssen. This is usually a large, significant amount and as I have learnt from doing this twice, it is of utmost importance that we have smooth communication between the finance team and the GCO team to ensure that the correct amounts are being charged out. We would have incorrectly reflected expenses and revenues for the month if these were not done properly and could have impacts on people hitting targets and performance levels. During this time, it is usually essential to have regular teleconferences with our intercompany team to identify any issues as soon as they arise and to deal with them quickly given the short time span we have to complete them. One of the skills I developed at this time was being aware of everyone’s availability and taking into account time differences between countries. When setting meetings I had to co-ordinate times between the two countries so that both teams could make it but at the same time make sure it did not clash with my manager’s calendar. One time I made it too early so it clashed with Manila’s lunch time and was these little things that I became more sensitive to. 

I also learned a lot about the process of charging another affiliate; to summarise we send intercompany a ‘Request to Charge an Affiliate’ with the appropriate backup. Our intercompany team raises a Sales Order on our behalf and sends the relevant affiliate a purchase order number for their approval. Once it is approved it is then recorded on both sides of our books. Likewise, when we receive charges from other affiliates we get sent a Purchase Order number and once it is approved by the relevant manager then that PO comes through.Some invoices can be seem deceivingly easy to draft up and send to intercompany as it requires approval from both parties and it is usually communicating the charge-out that takes the longest and occasionally makes the process very messy.

Another interesting issues that I came across when I was drafting corporate charges involves sensitive information. Many of those charges include confidential information such as the salary, bonuses and superannuation of the corporate person and this is more or less deducible from the debit memo. As a way of precaution because this invoice goes from many different sets of hands, amounts invoiced should only reflect total amounts which could include travel, entertainment and other various expenses relating to that person and we have to be careful that we do not explicitly say in the description of the invoice which portion of the invoice relate to salaries. In these cases I have learnt that it is vital to exercise prudence in your work and make sure personal information is not compromised.