Episode 59: Breaking Down Silos between Finance and Operations - a podcast by Ask QueBIT

Episode 59: Breaking Down Silos between Finance and Operations 

Guest: Amyn Dhamani

Specialized functions – or “Silos” – evolve in companies for a very good reason. It’s simply more efficient to clearly partition all the work that needs to be done, so that everyone knows what is expected of them without having to spend a ton of time coordinating and communicating. Imagine a soccer team where no-one has a clear responsibility, and everyone is BOTH a striker and a defender: this team is unlikely to prevail against one of equivalent skill whose players adopt more traditional roles.

All good things have limitations though, including specialization. Imagine a soccer team in which some players refuse to pass the ball to their teammates, perhaps because they do not trust their skills, or their commitment. This is clearly not a winning strategy either and a good coach invests heavily in trust-building and camaraderie to improve teamwork.

The same thing applies in companies. As companies grow it naturally becomes more and more difficult to know everyone well enough to trust them, and cross-functional teamwork suffers as a result. It takes investment and effort to mitigate this, but the rewards include a happier, more motivated workforce, better decision-making, and a healthier bottom-line.

Our guest this week is Amyn Dhamani who has spent 20 years working as a transformative Finance Leader at several major companies including Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages where he is currently the Director of Finance for Supply Chain FP&A. Amyn has first-hand experience of the benefits of partnering across functions and shares several real-life examples of how to build such partnerships and realize tangible business value as a result.

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