Client N is a manufacturing company with their factory in Shah Alam and their parent company in UK. Almost all of the senior management functions of the company were based in UK with the exception of Sales Director Asia Pacific, Steve who was based in the Shah Alam office. In short, management decisions are mainly made in UK.

When Steve approached us, it was mainly due to the financial information prepared by the Shah Alam finance team headed by a local Finance Manager was deemed to be incorrect by the UK office. However, they were not sure what went wrong. It was also during this time that the management in UK was considering a potential acquisition by an international manufacturing group. However, they needed to find out what went wrong with the financial information. They were looking for someone who could take on the interim CFO role for about 6 months.

We placed Madam G, a former CFO of a public listed company with senior experience in accounting and finance for manufacturing industry to troubleshoot the issues raised by Client N and also to provide interim management and leadership in accounting and finance for the Shah Alam office.

The reason we chose Madam G was due to her very hands-on personality that we had observed from earlier assignments.

Among the issues discovered or settled by Madam G as interim CFO were:

• Resolved issues with the settings of the ERP software which distorted financial information with the help of the software vendor.
• Internal controls were very weak and as a result, there were many loopholes in the whole accounting and finance procedures. For example, there was not sufficient check and balance which resulted in either glaring mistakes or financial irregularities.
• Lack of accounting and finance personnel, the office in Shah Alam was too much sales oriented with insufficient resources being allocated and attention being paid to accounting and finance which is a key element in good corporate governance.
• It was conclusively decided that the existing Finance Manager was not competent enough and a new Finance Manager Ms T was hired with the assistance of Madam G as the main interviewer. With the new Finance Manager in, Madam G played more of the role of a consultant while Ms T oversaw the daily accounting and finance operation as well as the implementation of recommended internal controls.

As the scope of this interim assignment was to identify the issues in the financial information and restore confidence in the financial reporting and internal controls, Madam G pulled out once the UK management and Steve felt they had the situation under control under the management of the new finance manager, Ms T.

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