One of my first experience in Finance Business partnering is during my time with one of the world Top mobile accessories start-up company. For those who wonder how Finance people can influence at work, keep reading!

The Scenario

I was a Business Analyst back then, first 2 month in the role. One day the CEO asked me to investigate something – He would like to know our factory maximum capacity of making phone cases per day. You may be surprised like I am – why we don’t know the numbers? It should be a straight-forward relationship between number of machine and operation time, isn’t it?

What did I do?

Asking the right question

In the next 2 weeks I was sitting in the factory with colleagues but didn’t straight away ask them the numbers. I observed their way of work and tried to ask them to show me the process of manufacturing. At first, they are a bit hesitated. But I explained to them that my goal is to share not only the maximum factory capacity, but also to assist them to rationalize and consolidate their concerns on it.

Later I discovered it is not a simple calculation of [no. of machine x operation hour], there are other factors that can impact the capacity, such as:

• Number of Machine operating per day

• Number of colleagues and their working hours

• Type of phone case ordered

• Default rate of products …etc

The Result

2 weeks later I reported back to CEO of what he is asking for: the factory maximum capacity, but not just 1 figure. I explained the factors that would vary the capacity and also consolidated some suggestions form the factory that can improve. Both CEO and Factory are happy!

The Reflection

I still remember this task after some years, I as it’s a good lesson to realize that we as finance analyst cannot just stop with the numbers/ data/ reports on hand, there is always business reasons behind; it would be the hardware limitation, the operation, the people involve etc. Our task is to make sense of the numbers and effectively communicate to the stakeholders.

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