Chapter 2 2. Internal Dialogues Begin

As I got up to leave the Boardroom, I was overwhelmed by this mental heat wave which I didn't know how I was going to cool it down with. By the door there's this beautiful red small Boardroom fridge, I walked towards it and open the door. It's fully stocked with most soft drinks you can think of, water, iced tea, juice, sodas and I reached out to grab a can of coke.

The Boss lady has done a great job of transferring the heat she was getting from hubby and Big Boss to me. Our office is just 50 meters away, I share an office with the 2 Accountants. A young lady by the name of Patricia 31 years of age. She is a mid-level Accountant with 5 years' working experience after she completed her 3 years' articles.

From our previous conversations, this is her third job of her career. She apparently left her previous company after she noticed that it was starting to experience cashflow challenges. I personally didn't know what to make of that reason because it is the job of an accountant to ensure that the company has a healthy cashflow and that suppliers and employees are paid on time and who gets paid first. In other words, financial risk assessments were her responsibility because he knows the important suppliers that are critical to keep the production line going and when the production line is up and running then there good and services available to sell to customers. She also had an oversight to ensure that customers pay the company on time to ensure that the company has a healthy cashflow.

At the moment I am not suggesting anything, I am merely thinking out loud. She has been with our company for 2 years and is her 3rd year with the company.

The second Accountant is an old man called Mr. Manuel, he is very experienced especially in the coal mining space, his knowledge of the accounting principles pertaining to mining are very good. I would usually hear his advice to Patricia regarding how to implement accounting principles to our day-to-day scenarios.

I am yet to wrap my head around his personality, he is 55 years old. The old man complains about everything, if it's not about being old and how much he can't wait to go to pension, is going to be about how his stay home wife is always overspending when they go shopping, despite the fact that they go once or twice a month since they stay on different provinces during the week because our office is 120 kilometers away from his house and there traffic Jams get insane from 50 kilometers away from his house.

The old man even complain about how his son is seaming to be a looser because he is pursuing a career as a full-time entrepreneur and his son is still living in the apartment, he bought for him when he started tertiary 10 years ago. He always wonders why his son is not like his daughter, who is now doing her second post graduate qualification.

He always tells the story of how incredible his daughter is because after completing her first post-graduate qualification, she bought herself a new vehicle and returned the polo vivo that he bought for her while starting tertiary. Talking of beautiful stories.

I finally got to my desk and opened my can of coke to try and cool my head. I took a sip, it was followed by another sip and in no time, the can was empty as though I was trying to extinguish flames of fire burning inside my belly.

Remember as a Financial Analyst, it is my job to know the source of any number reported on our Financials. It is my job to know what constitutes every single line of every report on our Financials. Numbers don't lie unless they are cooked. The internal dialogues have started, and they were intensifying by the minute.

The more I was asking myself questions, it was like opening the pandora box because too many things were coming to mind. There are more questions I was asking, the wider the scope of my analysis was becoming, amongst the questions which were going through my head were;

Are the numbers correct? 60% over budget was a lot If so, is it a Systems failure or was it the failure of people to ensure that internal processes get followed?

How did this happen?

Who is responsible?

How can this be prevented in the future?

How can we avoid a single point of failure?

Was it deliberate or a mistake?

What were the patterns leading to this?

And, where to from here?

Indeed, a pandora box was opened and there is no going back from here. One of the things on my to-do list was to put a face or person responsible for any possible scenario.

Putting a face to responsibility has a couple of advantages, this will eliminate firstly chasing my own tail and secondly give me areas to zoom in on or people I need to pay more attention into because they could possibly be the weakest links of the system.

Remember any company has multiple departments that form the various elements of the value chain, in our case. We have finance, engineering, logistics, payroll, production and administration.

Finance and payroll are closely linked, finance is responsible for receiving money from customers, pay suppliers and financial reporting.

Payroll ensures employees are paid on time and ensures that the correct employees are paid and paid the correct amounts.

Engineering is responsible for ensuring that all our fleet and machinery are operating to their optimal levels all the time.

Logistics ensures that our coal arrives at our customer's shores on time and that customer's fleet complies to our mining regulations as well as ensuring that loads that are picked up reconcile to the Loads finance is going to invoice to our customers for payment.

Production is responsible for ensuring that we produce enough coal to meet the demand of our clientele.

Finally, the Admin is responsible for the administration of the entire company value chain.