Working as the head of the Polish branch of Yamaha Motor gave me a lot of satisfaction. The development of the company, its position on the market, as well as working with a great team and dealer network made me enjoy it a lot. While managing the company, I did not forget about finance. After some time, each employee and dealer understood how business decisions translate into their financial results.
At the beginning of 2020, I took over as the head of two additional Yamaha branches, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Due to the similarity of our markets and the many years of experience with my team, it was a challenge that I took up with pleasure. Although the process of integration and development of both markets is not completed yet, I believe that we have already achieved a lot by building a good local team and developing the dealer network, and the next years will bring even further good results of these activities.
Last year, I was offered the position of CFO at Yamaha's European headquarters in Schiphol-Rijk, the Netherlands. In this position, the company wanted a person who has practical experience in working with the dealer network, understanding the needs of national distributors and knowing how to support them.
And although it was difficult for me to part with my life and the team so far, I decided to take up this new challenge, while appreciating the opportunities that Yamaha once again offered me. I moved to Amsterdam during the ongoing pandemic, which - thanks to the help I received from the HR department - turned out to be not that difficult.
My Finance & Accounting Team acts as a Shared Services Center and is responsible for the finances and accounting of all Yamaha branches in Europe, of which there are nearly 20 in total! We also supervise our subsidiaries, advising and supporting them when necessary.
Thanks to such diversity, working in our F&A department is extremely interesting. Here you don’t only learn about the specificity of accounting and tax requirements of individual countries, or only about the different types of products (including motorcycles, scooters, outboard motors, WaveRunners, boats, golf cars, snowmobiles and ATVs) and activities (distribution, production, financial services) offered, but you also develop various specializations (taxes, banking, consolidation, controlling) or take part in various - often pan-European - projects.
At work, we put emphasis on cooperation with individual departments and business units of the company, trying to act as advisors. Our ambition is to bring to the group not only professional knowledge, but also to show the understanding and support needed on a daily basis in operational activities across Europe.
We place great emphasis on the automation and standardization of processes, so that we can spend more time solving problems or searching for new solutions for the constantly developing product lines and services.
Our ambition is to provide our organization in Europe with modern, top class and financially effective F&A related solutions that will support its further development and allow to increase a competitive advantage.