At the end of the year, the finance department is in a state of chaos, with a large amount of data to be viewed, calculated, managed, analyzed, checked, and estimated. Almost every October, the finance department begins to work overtime. The annual closing and auditing of subsidiaries around the world begins. At the same time, the budget preparation and review work for the new year is also being carried out simultaneously. Every financial organization is tightly bound and dragged by these two main lines, and falls into an endless ocean of numbers.

"Looking back at the path I came from, I see the vast expanse of green mountains." The year that is about to pass is a heavy memory and a rich harvest for the finance team. In particular, when we look back and think about the height we stood at a year ago, and then look back and look at the height we stand at a year later, I believe that many teams and colleagues have infinite emotion and are extremely proud.

当我们站在这个新的高度，极目远眺曾经翻过的重峦叠嶂，闭目回想曾经蹚过的曲折泥泞，怎能不为自己的努力而欣喜，怎能不为自己的坚韧而鼓舞。当然，此时此刻的超然，只是下一段雄关漫道的开始。

Open up the boundaries of operations, where the responsibility lies, we are there

Projects are the basic cells of a company's operation and management. The project finance team has been continuously built for more than three years. This year, various regions have added a lot of project finance personnel to us. In terms of "similar in form", the financial personnel configuration of the project is basically in place; in terms of "similar in spirit", we are still far from the expectations of the management. Although the overall ability of project finance is still halfway up the mountain, compared with us who were at the foot of the mountain three years ago, it is still worth a little self-motivation. 1,500 project finance people around the world are working hard on contracts and projects. Their ubiquitous efforts and unswerving persistence are igniting shining sparks in every corner of the world.

The project finance of S Representative Office is simple and unpretentious. With its solid efforts, it has won the recognition of the front-line and proved its value. They went 120 kilometers deep into the desert site under the scorching sun, and inspected the road construction situation at the site every month, reducing the road construction cost of the project by 3.5 million US dollars; they drove to the 2-kilometer-deep Grand Canyon, and inspected the site with the site engineers and subcontractors, and came up with a feasible plan to "reduce the delivery cost of 10 sites in the canyon"; they stayed at the site, slowly negotiated and communicated with the local villagers, and replaced the oil engine costs with temporary electricity for the villagers, saving 388,000 US dollars in oil engine costs for ten months for the 31 sites of the project.

In 2016, the exchange rate of Country N fluctuated greatly, and the project finance of the representative office took the initiative to participate. Before negotiating the contract with the customer, we collected information, carefully calculated, and framed the possible foreign exchange losses during the entire contract performance cycle. During the contract negotiation, we participated in the negotiation of the terms of the exchange loss sharing mechanism on site. Even if the negotiation reached an impasse, we still protected the interests of the company with courtesy and diligence. After the contract was signed, we never slackened in tracking the collection of funds, tracking the delivery plan, tracking the customer's payment plan, and actively coordinating the work efficiency and progress of both sides, effectively closing the foreign exchange risk exposure.

Watch the flowers in the courtyard bloom and fall, and the clouds in the sky roll and unroll. Although the project finance has made some progress, everyone understands: "We have only taken one step here, so please don't give up halfway."

We are a team that works continuously and tirelessly. We have the confidence, willingness and ability to deliver a project finance team to the front line in another 2 to 3 years that will "use me in the first battle and I will win."

For the finance team, fulfilling job responsibilities is our compulsory course, and management opportunities that are not written in the job responsibilities are our elective courses. The finance team has been working hard to become the best practice in the ICT industry in compulsory courses; at the same time, it continues to work hard to become the most trusted and trustworthy partner in the business in elective courses.

Open up management boundaries, where opportunities are, we are there

The professional capabilities of project finance are still in the climbing stage. Growth through exploration and correction through adaptation will be our norm in the next few years. Another transformation project of finance - the construction of internal control system, has now come out of the fog after several years of hard work.

In 2007, internal control management, as a sub-project of IFS, opened the door to reform from scratch. After ten years of hard work, our internal control awareness, internal control mechanism and internal control capability have been integrated into all business activities. Internal control is implemented wherever there is business, forming a global internal control management system based on "process responsibility and organizational responsibility".

At the beginning of the implementation of internal control, finance was regarded as the opposite of business, and the purpose of internal control seemed to be to prevent business from passing quickly. In the chaos and confusion, we gradually found our own position and put forward the management goal of "the value of internal control should be reflected in the improvement of business results". We also refined and broke down the internal control work along this goal, explained, communicated and loosened the soil one by one in each region and organization, and determined the internal control work goals of this field and organization one by one. With a goal, you must make a commitment; with a commitment, you must achieve it; internal control management gradually took root and sprouted in business activities, and the front-line team gradually accepted the concept of internal control and was willing to carry out operations according to the management requirements of internal control.

The internal control team of Representative Office M implemented an automated acceptance, invoicing and verification system to improve the quality of the OTC process, shortening the invoicing time from 80 minutes to 10 minutes and reducing the customer rejection rate by 98%.

The internal control team of the L Representative Office also focused on improving the OTC process. In response to the actual pain points of the business, they chose to focus on automatically connecting POs with customers. After the project was implemented, the accounts receivable difference was reduced by US$32 million and the return loss was reduced by US$11 million that year.

These are the real operating benefits brought by the silent operation of the internal control mechanism. When the huge machine is running, internal control is both a lubricant and a brake. We are the lubricant for improving operations and optimizing operations; we are the brake for decentralization and checks and balances and data transparency. Effective internal control management provides institutional guarantees for "active authorization and effective exercise of power." Let organizations that can hear the gunfire dare to exercise power and actively exercise power; let organizations that can see the overall situation reasonably authorize and effectively control; this is the management and control mechanism we want. The real beneficiaries of the internal control mechanism are the company's operating organizations at all levels, with more power, greater responsibilities, and clearer boundaries. Each organization can live a wonderful and nourishing life within the boundaries of its own power and responsibilities.

Open up organizational boundaries, where talents are, we are there

An organization must bravely branch out and actively absorb new energy in an open dissipative structure in order to obtain continuous growth momentum, just like photosynthesis of plants, a seed can grow into a towering tree.

In the past two years, Finance has been working hard to open up organizational boundaries, introduce fresh blood, and acquire outstanding talents from all over the world. In November 2014, Group Finance held a special recruitment fair for finance in the UK for the first time, taking the first step to actively expand overseas talents. Now Huawei Finance team has hundreds of outstanding students from famous universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, etc., who are gradually becoming our new force. Finance's overseas recruitment has gradually formed a mechanism. From employer brand building to campus presentation arrangements, from summer practice activities to financial challenges, our reputation in top universities is slowly accumulating. In 2016, Finance recruited nearly 340 international students, accounting for 38% of our campus recruitment target this year.

The international students who join Huawei Finance have a strong desire to change the world and realize their personal values. They are passionate, motivated, have strong learning ability, and have a broad mindset. Once, they were admitted to world-renowned universities with solid grades and excellent character. They live independently in a foreign country and strive to learn. Now, they have joined our team, and the general qualities they embody are "able to endure hardships", "know how to cherish", "strong time management", and "quick team integration". The spirit of hard work they show is highly consistent with Huawei's core values. We look forward to these young people growing up quickly and shining brightly.

At the same time, we build organizations close to talents and build capabilities close to talents.

In 2015, the tax planning team and the related-party transaction team moved to London. In the following year or so, we found that high-end talents in these two fields are much easier to obtain than before, and they are integrated into the team more smoothly and effectively. These experts with great professional influence in the industry have driven our professional tax capacity building to a new level. Everyone respects them as "grandpa" and "grandma". Being able to work with these grandpas and grandmas is the best non-material incentive for us young people who are eager to grow.

Breaking down organizational boundaries and introducing "colleagues without Huawei work cards", whether you are an employee or a consultant, whether you are full-time or part-time, we will cooperate very openly, and "everything for victory" is our only goal. The head of GlaxoSmithKline's global related-party transactions, the beloved Nike Papa, once led the world's largest related-party transaction litigation case. After he participated in our tax reform project as a consultant, we boldly gave him the role of technical director. Facts have proved that the technical solution of the related-party transaction architecture led by him is completely at the leading level in the industry.

Open up the boundaries of thought, where the method is, we are there

Among all the boundaries, the most difficult to break is the invisible boundary of thinking. Only by breaking the shackles of thinking patterns, actively trying new methods and new tools, breaking the boundaries of work habits, and trying new angles and new positions can we keep up with this rapidly changing era. Today, we have long surpassed the scope of basic financial services. The advanced tools and methods of the ICT industry are equipping our team and creating unlimited vitality.

In the field of accounting, we actively try automation and intelligence, and let machines complete the accounting work of standard business scenarios. At present, there are an average of about 1.2 million employee expense reimbursements per year. While employees are self-service reimbursed, machines directly generate accounting vouchers according to established rules; 98 countries and 746 accounts are interconnected, and payment instructions can be transmitted to any bank in the world within 2 minutes; our payment accuracy level is more than 100 times higher than that of banks; in the four business scenarios in the AP field, we have enabled computers to process them by themselves. In the pilot for half a year, parallel verification was carried out through manual work, and the results proved that the accuracy rate was 100%.

The RFID IoT asset management solution we have implemented globally has now covered 52 countries, 2,382 sites, and 140,000 fixed assets. RFID tags are attached to fixed assets that need to be managed, automatically reporting location information every 5 minutes and updating the usage load (or idleness) of fixed assets every day. After deploying RFID, fixed asset inventory has been reduced from several months to just a few minutes, reducing the workload of asset inventory and asset inspection by 9,000 man-days each year. Asset displacement information and asset idle information are updated and shared in a timely manner, allowing us to be more targeted in asset management.

Four big data projects in the field of capital planning have shown amazing creativity. The big data projects of "operating cash flow forecast" and "currency cash flow forecast" have been officially launched. Based on the big data model, the computer performs tens of thousands of data calculations and model iterations, and the operating cash flow has achieved a 12-month rolling forecast. From the fit of historical data, the minimum deviation is only 8 million US dollars. For a company with sales in 170 countries, a revenue scale of approximately 80 billion US dollars, and an annual cash settlement volume of approximately 400 billion US dollars, an 8 million US dollar rolling cash flow forecast deviation is already an extremely ideal result.

Dancing with machines is so wonderful! Numbers give machines warmth, and their surprises are like passionate years.

Open up the boundaries of capabilities, wherever the craftsmen are, we are there

There are always endless and countless touching stories in every growth step of the financial team. The spirit of perseverance, hard work and continuous improvement in craftsmanship supports the progress of the entire organization.

The implementation of the inventory reconciliation project has made the site inventory visible, countable and manageable for the first time in the company's nearly 30-year operating history. The site inventory reconciliation rate increased from 76% in 2014 to 98.62% in 2016; 88 million USD of off-book materials in the global central warehouse were reused; 75 million USD of overdue inventory was cleared; the age structure of central warehouse and site inventory was greatly improved; ITO increased by 44 days year-on-year; these remarkable achievements have once again proved that we are a team that "says and does what we say". In 2014, we promised the company that it would take three years to achieve global inventory reconciliation. "We must keep our promise and do what we do." Now, we have fulfilled our original promise.

Accounting has realized a global 7*24-hour cycle settlement mechanism, making full use of the time difference advantage of our shared center. Under the same data platform and the same settlement rules, the shared center relays the settlement operation, greatly shortening the calendar days for settlement. The 24-hour system automatically rolls over the settlement data, 170+ systems are seamlessly connected, and 40 million rows of data are processed every hour. The shared center "does not set" cycle settlement, supporting the timely acquisition of business data of 130+ representative offices at the fastest speed.

All 259 subsidiaries around the world must issue financial reports under three accounting standards in accordance with local accounting standards, Chinese accounting standards, and international accounting standards. In addition, they must issue responsibility center operating reports based on product, region, BG, customer group, and other dimensions. These reports can be output with high quality within five days.

Maria Carlos Paula, a Brazilian tax commissioner, discovered that according to INSS regulations, social security taxes paid could be applied for deduction. So he gave up his vacation and spent more than two months finding more than 150 tax refund evidences in the piles of warehouses. Carlos' efforts and persistence helped us get back $30 million of "wrongful money" from the Brazilian tax bureau.

Ma Ali, a "payment craftsman", stamps 3,000 times a day during peak hours, one stamp every 15 seconds, so that her hands tremble constantly when she holds a bowl of rice. However, even with such high intensity and high pressure, Ma Ali has paid hundreds of billions of dollars of funds for more than ten years without making a single mistake. What kind of effort and sacrifice is this? !

Traditional financial services are no longer the goal we strive for. The accountant with a hunched back, bent waist, holding a water cup and wearing reading glasses is no longer our image spokesperson.

Finance has been integrated into all the company's business activities. From contract estimates to project collection, from product planning to market analysis, from business trip applications to expense reimbursement, from asset management to inventory management, from sales financing negotiations to financing planning implementation, from tax planning to pricing design... With the growth of the company, the financial organization has gone from "very backward" to "relatively backward", and from "relatively backward" to "somewhat advanced". Confucius asked about his ambitions, and Yan Yuan said: "I hope not to boast of my goodness, and not to show off my hard work." Although our culture is low-key, we are still very proud of the continuous efforts and achievements of the financial team. Today, our financial professional capabilities are generally at the best level in the industry, and some areas are already at the best level in the industry.

Just as Shu Ting wrote in "To the Oak Tree", the relationship between financial organizations and business organizations is like that between oak trees and kapok trees, which are both independent and interdependent.

As the New Year approaches, let me borrow this poem by Shu Ting as the conclusion of my New Year’s speech, and dedicate it to my financial friends who are working hard all over the world. Thank you all for your persistent efforts, and thank you all for your never-give-up fighting spirit. I believe that we are neither climbing trumpet creepers nor infatuated birds, but we are the tall and upright kapok trees!

……

I must be a kapok tree near you,

As the image of a tree, I stand with you,

Roots, clenched in the ground,

Leaves, touching each other in the clouds,

……

You have your copper branches and iron trunks,

Like a knife, like a sword,

It is also like a halberd.

I have my big red flower,

Like a heavy sigh,

Like a heroic torch,

We share the cold waves, winds, thunderbolts, and lightning,

We share the mist, the clouds, the rainbow,

……

In the coming year, we will still work harder and we can still be proud!

Source | The Paper

Exclusively compiled by Xinshiye