Corporate Blog
"Why I work for Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan" #5 Yu.I and Risa.M, Finance
March 01, 2022
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Drive the business by analyzing the past and predicting the future based on data, that's where the happiness lies
In "Why I work for Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan" series, we focus on some of the people who work at our company and interview them about what kind of work they do in order to deliver happy moments.
For our fifth release, we interviewed Yu-san, who has been with the company for 2 years since he joined the company through the recruitment by job role for the finance field after graduating from an American university, and Risa-san, who was in her first year of employment.
――Why did you join this company?
Yu-san：Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan was participating in the Boston Career Forum that I visited in 2019. It was its first time exhibiting, so I felt it was a novelty. Also, I was attracted to Coca-Cola products, especially "Coca-Cola Zero", because I drink it a lot.
The final choice was made for two reasons. Most of all, they were implementing the recruitment by job role for the finance field. I majored in finance and minored in analytics and statistics at university, so I wanted to find a job that would make use of what I had learned. If it had not been for the recruitment by job role, I might not have applied. The other thing was that it is a place where I can grow. At the briefing session, I heard that Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan had been born in 2017 after a number of integrations and it would change in the future. And I thought I could learn a lot since it was in a middle of transformation, and decided to jump into the environment.
Risa-san：I participated in a briefing session of Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan at the Tokyo Summer Career Forum. The decision factors for me to join the company were the recruitment by job role and diversity & inclusion (D&I). I made an application because it was implementing the recruitment by job role for the finance field, for which I would be able to make use of accounting which I had been majoring in at university. In addition, from the experience of meeting people with various backgrounds while studying abroad, I wanted to work in a company that is open-minded toward diversity, so I felt that CCBJI’s efforts to promote D&I were attractive.
*For CCBJI's D&I initiatives, click here.
――Can you tell us about your current job?
Risa-san：Currently, I am on the job rotation program within Finance, and I belong to a department which supports commercial departments from a finance perspective, where I am creating budgets for the next fiscal year. My job is to predict sales for the next year from historical sales data, and find out promotion costs and other appropriate costs that are necessary to achieve it from last year's and current year's commercial accounting data.
Yu-san：I belong to the Internal Audit Office, where I am involved in operations such as the Internal Control Reporting System (J-SOX) and project audits. After the job rotation was completed, we, the new employees hired through the recruitment by job role for the finance field, submitted our desired departments, and the assignments were decided upon discussion with our supervisors. The Internal Audit Office was the department to which I had been assigned for the last 6 months of my job rotation period. During project audits, we sometimes go to sales and manufacturing sites and interview people working there about expenses and information security management. Through duties like seeing the actual workplaces where they work and listening to their stories I thought I would be able to understand the true nature of our business and make use of it in the future, which was why I wanted to work in this department.
Since I was the first person who had been hired through the recruitment by job role for the finance field, I feel that it was a bit of an experiment for the company. My first assignment was decided to be a department that was different from the one that had been originally planned. "Since the core of Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan's business is sales, it's better to understand it by taking charge of that department," my supervisor said. And I was assigned to the job of which currently Risa-san is in charge. I think that my feedback, "It was great to have an experience as a business partner in finance while understanding the processes of our business," led Risa-san, a second-term candidate, to take the same route as mine.
――I have a question for Yu-san. This is your second year of employment. Do you feel any difference at work from the first year?
Yu-san：I have the opportunity to share what I have learned with my colleagues. If I don't understand it properly, I can't verbalize it and explain it to them. When I was preparing for the explanation, I realized that there were some parts that I thought I had learned from my seniors, but I didn’t actually understand. I try to organize any unclear knowledge and communicate it in a way that is easy for others to understand.
――Do you think there is an environment which allows young people to take on challenges?
Yu-san： I think there is an environment where they are allowed to take on challenges in stages, starting from small-scale projects. And their supervisors will confirm their jobs and follow up on any mistakes, so they can work with peace of mind. Gaining experience in an environment which allows you to take on challenges with a certain amount of discretion is rewarding.
――Risa-san is in her first year of employment, but did your impression of your work differ from what it was before joining the company?
Risa-san：There are no particular gaps. I am now required not only to achieve the project but also to understand its process, therefore I am carefully observing and learning the concepts and journey of the project. I imagine what I would do before joining a project, but I get insights from my seniors' work, so it is an important period for me.
――What is worthwhile about your job or what is your "happy moment" in your work?
Risa-san：It is the moment when I analyze figures in two different reports and the figures of sales revenue, etc. that I calculated from both reports exactly match each other. In accounting, it is a must for the numbers to match, so I am happy when they perfectly match. My current job is to predict the future, and it's fun to get new findings derived from the numbers!
Yu-san：Last year, I was involved in a project in the commercial department and analyzed the promotion costs. I created a model which is usable into the future, which calculates appropriate promotion costs for specific sale area. It is a mechanism which allows you to know when the promotion costs have exceeded the calculated amount. I heard that it was actually used and helped reduce the promotion costs, and I found my job interesting. Data collection and quantifying to create the model were quite difficult, but I was glad when my activities brought the outcome.
――What do you want to tackle in the future?
Yu-san：I am still in the stage of doing the work given by my boss and senior members, but I want to lead projects that involve the business in the future. I don't think I can do everything from the beginning, but when I have a chance, I will not be afraid to try. Suppose it ends up in a success or failure, the experience will lead to my growth, and I am sure that someday it will show up in my results.
Risa-san：Although often confused, accounting and finance are different areas of business. Accounting deals with past profits, and it subtracts expenses from the sales that occurred in the business in the past to finalize the profit. In a nutshell, it organizes what happened in the past.
On the other hand, finance is an area of management which is responsible for what a company invests on, for example, facilities, people, or M&A, how it procures and manages funds, and how it allocates profits in order to increase corporate value in the future. Basically, it is an operation which cannot begin without investments for the future, and it deals with the things in the future. Although it is necessary for a company, it is not specified by the laws, so it is not something that must be done. I prefer to organize past figures, so I eventually want to work in the Internal Audit Office as it is in the middle of these, or in the Governance Department, which organizes past records.
――You have more time at home under the covid situation, how do you spend it?
Yu-san：I have been playing basketball since I was an elementary school student, so I do it when I need a break. I like to move my body, so I work out when I have time at home.
Risa-san： I am an indoor person. I often spend my time watching movies and videos at home. Since I work from home, I've been doing some sit-ups lately, trying to get some exercise, and I've been failing at it.
――Which of the MVV values (Learning, Agility, Result-orientation, Integrity) are you most focused on?
Yu-san：It's Result-orientation. There is this idea at the foundation of myself that you must work backwards from the result to get things done. If you move forward without enough preparation, you will stop by somewhere else before reaching your goal without signposts, taking time and unnecessary efforts. I had studied in the U.S. since high school for basketball, and it also applies to sports. I had decided at the beginning the steps from "I want to do this" and "I want to be like this" to the goal of "I need to do this now" and "This is the next step." I think it is important in all things in common.
Risa-san： It's Result-orientation for me as well. I think that thinking backwards from the result and doing the job in stages will lead to Learning and other MVV values. I would like to have some idea of the ultimate goal for how I want to become, and take on challenges and make efforts toward it.
Which of the MVV values (Learning, Agility, Result-orientation, Integrity) are you most focused on?
Yu-san：It's Result-orientation. There is this idea at the foundation of myself that you must work backwards from the result to get things done. If you move forward without enough preparation, you will stop by somewhere else before reaching your goal without signposts, taking time and unnecessary efforts. I had studied in the U.S. since high school for basketball, and it also applies to sports. I had decided at the beginning the steps from "I want to do this" and "I want to be like this" to the goal of "I need to do this now" and "This is the next step." I think it is important in all things in common.
Risa-san： It's Result-orientation for me as well. I think that thinking backwards from the result and doing the job in stages will lead to Learning and other MVV values. I would like to have some idea of the ultimate goal for how I want to become, and take on challenges and make efforts toward it.