Dear my dearest friends,
After my graduation with a degree in Accountancy, I started my career as Audit Assistant in one of the Audit firms in Kuala Lumpur. Not too long thereafter, the owner of the firm who split from his other partners had passed away. As a result, his family members decided to sell the firm and his clients to another audit firm. Consequentially I also moved along and joined the acquirer of the firm.
Being the staff of the acquired firm, I have to struggle to conform with the new culture and system they operated on. I noted that the staff from the acquired firm left, one after another as they found the changes uncomfortable. Whereas I decided to quit after being rejected for a promotion from the partner. His reason was that I was much too junior as compared to their other senior staff despite a recommendation from my immediate superior, Mr Koh, whom I am still in touch with till to date. Though I was more junior, yet I have the chance to lead the team in auditing some of their big clients. They requested me to lead some of big assignments as I have always extra notes, in term of good and sound recommendations in regards to the clients' internal control and system, for them.
With God's blessings, I managed to stepped into commercial sector as Assistant Accountant in a listed company ( IJM Corporation Berhad). Initially, I was assigned to take care of their plant and machinery department, which is one of their major departments other than construction projects. After I was familiar with this department's operation and their accounting system, my superior, Mr Loy, whom I still keep in touch with, assigned me to other tasks in other subsidiaries within his care so as to tap my past audit experience and skill. He also assigned me to set up the accounting system for some of their subsidiaries such as quarry and other manufacturing companies.
Thank God again. He was satisfied with my performance, and assigned me to other new assignments such as revamping and implementting standard costing in another manufacturing arm. Thereafter, he increased my portfolio and I also act as the Reporting Accountant for all the the projects of the company and its group. I began to be exposed to various level of consolidation, that includes projectsl, joint ventures, subsidiaries and finally the entire group. From there, I began to draft and implement certain accounting policies and practices so as to standardise their practices to ease the consolidation work.
amongst the project accountants.
At that time, the company called for extra fund via rights issues which I was also involved actively as I was very familiar with the software application such as Lotus spreadsheet. It was very popular at that time and we used it to produce the framework and spreadsheet for this exercise. My other major contribution to this exercise was to recommend for adoption IAS 17 finance lease. This changes of accounting policy resulted in the company booking couple of millions of gain prior to this exercise.
After the completion of the above exercise, i was offered the post as Branch Accountant, to take charge of several construction projects in East Malaysia. I took up the offer as I was so excited to work as Project Accountant.
I finally left the company off after this exposure and decided to join another well managed company in Malaysia- none other than Hong Leong Group. I have again been blessed with the exposure to these three operating manuals/bible (HR, Credit Control and Group Accounting and Policies and Procedures) to govern the group's operations. Besides that, they also adopted Key Performance Indicators and quarterly audits to streamline their individual operating units.
Again I was so blessed to be placed in one of the cash cow motorcycle unit where I had opportunity to demonstrate my new potential to generate more than a million of interest income as compared to couple of hundred thousand ringgit prior to this. Here, I worked well with my team members to tap every opportunity to generate interest income, apart from bargaining for daily best rate with our commercial bankers. We are also the pioneers to introduce Islamic banking concept into our treasury unit. My other contribution to the group is assisting in the group consolidation at our Head office due to shortage of staff, participation in Acquisition Audit assignment and quarterly audit where my recommendations were fully agreed and implemented by my boss, Mr Ron Lim and Mr Soh. I am still in touch with the latter.
Again, I moved on after I have completed my mission and move to another challenging job as turn around manager apart from my other new functions such as administration, payroll, inventories and credit control Manager in one of the ill trading company. I worked very closely with my General Manager, Mr Tay until we almost turn it around, he got a very much better job which he can’t resist. As a result, he quitted from the company. My other significant contribution to this company was successfully implementing the FGH integrated accounting software to replace our stand alone system. We were also selected to pioneer in EDP project in the group.
Again, I moved and join the company which is also my longest service in any company and I managed to engage all my valuable experience and skill which I learnt from the above company. I managed to put all these into practice and grow the company to a certain extent. Some of you may know that I also completed my mission as turnaround manager in this company before I was being transferred to take care of other portfolio.
Finally I landed in this venture after working with several companies locally and oversea.
Thanks for spending your time to read this article.
Your Chief Servant,
James Oh
Founder and Group CEO
Skype me at james.oh18
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