SSO Pro Graduate Spotlight Interview: Stuart Anderson, Holcim (Australia)

Graduate Name: Stuart Anderson Company / Organization: Holcim (Australia) Title: Operations Accounting Manager Description of Role: I lead the team that is responsible for providing the management and operational accounting support to Holcim Australia’s 230+ production sites, split across 3 business units and the corporate function. How long have you been in this position? 3.5 years What are your three main challenges in the year ahead? a. To continue to meet our internal customers ever increasing expectations b. To ensure that adequate development opportunities are provided to the team c. To enshrine a continuous improvement philosophy within the team How has the SSO Pro course helped develop some solutions to these? The major benefit of the SSO Pro course is to show candidates how a diverse group of topics are actually inter-related. Our 3 main challenges are diverse in nature, however having been exposed to such a wide-ranging program, I am confident I can apply what I have learnt to my specific situations. On a side note, having people post their insights and experiences on the course notice board also shows candidates that they are not alone in their challenges or thoughts! Have you been able to share some of the tools and templates with your team and/or stakeholders (customers/suppliers) to improve your processes? We are just starting out on our process excellence journey, so I anticipate sharing this knowledge with the team during 2016. What was your favourite module? Why? How has it impacted your day-to-day output/work? I would not say it was my favourite, but the benchmarking module is probably the one I got the most out of. I had had very little exposure to this topic previously in my work career, so this was a real eye opener for me. The amount of data and information out there is staggering, so learning to be able to filter through it to gain real insight into your specific issue/problem/challenge is what I enjoyed most. How have you celebrated and recognized your wonderful accomplishment? To be honest I kept the achievement under the radar until our Head of Business Services awarded me my certificate in front of our entire Business Services Team. If you could choose anyone to lead one of the modules, or perhaps a new module, who would it be and what would their topic be? I think it would be a toss-up between Steve Carell / Ricky Gervais for a HR module or Homer Simpson for process excellence! David Attenborough would do an excellent job narrating any topic. [Editor's note: we have a call into Mr. Gervais's office!] SSO Pro is designed to be one component to Professional Development and learning. Describe how your learning from the program fits into a larger leadership development approach. I mentioned earlier that all of the topics in the SSO Pro course are inter-related. To me a leader needs to have a broad vision and an understanding of how to motivate others to achieve the vision. The course offers this broad view of shared services. In addition to the content and skills learned, what else did you gain from the course? My main take away was a greater appreciation of the fact that shared services is an industry in its own right. The universal challenges that business face these days can only be serviced by a well-defined, process focussed support function. Did going through the program inspire a new interest in a topic, role or project for you? Going through the program will assist me in the future as it has added a further string to my bow and given me a wider perspective on how to face tomorrow’s challenges. [inlinead]

SSO Pro Graduate Spotlight Interview: Stuart Anderson, Holcim (Australia)

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SSO Pro Graduate Spotlight Interview: Stuart Anderson, Holcim (Australia)

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