Ep. 157: Wes Saber - Serving as a Co-pilot for the Business Transformation Journey

Wes Saber, CFO for HARIBO of America, joins Count Me In to talk
about the popular topic of business transformation. Wes has been
an international leader in innovative management philosophy and
business development for more than 22 years. His expertise in
developing global enterprises has led him to his current role as
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for HARIBO
of America, producer of the #1 gummi in the U.S. He spearheaded
the development of the $242M investment to build HARIBO’s
first-ever U.S. factory, projected to create hundreds of career
opportunities in the first phase build-out. In this episode, Wes
talks about why business transformation is such a popular topic,
his experience with transformations and the specific role(s) the
finance team played, and how finance leaders can manage change
and promote teamwork and adaptability. Download and listen now!


About Wes Saber:
https://www.haribo.com/en-us/about-us/meet-our-board/wes-saber


About HARIBO:


https://www.haribo.com/en-us

https://www.linkedin.com/company/haribo-of-america-inc-

https://www.instagram.com/haribousa/?hl=en



FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:05)
Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. Here with you again,
as your host, Adam Larson, as I kick off episode 157 of our
series, Count Me In has shared a number of conversations relating
to business transformation, but today's featured guest speaker
shares a unique perspective on the topic Wes Saber, CFO of HARIBO
of America joined us to talk about how the finance function and
finance leaders serve as best copilots for any business
transformation journey. Wes is a great leader who constantly
encourages his staff as he promotes change and transformation. So
keep listening to hear more as we head over the conversation
now.
 
Mitch: (00:54)
We have heard a lot about business transformation, particularly
in finance and accounting. So to kick off our conversation today
from your perspective and through your experiences, really my
first question is why? Why is this such an important topic for
our listeners?
 
Wes: (01:09)
Thank you very much for having me today. Business transformation
is the constant, in the current business world. Business
transformation is important to keep the business relevant, the
strategy of the business agile and us as professional, very
relevant in terms of competency and business acumen as we go.
Business transformation is a journey that has different milestone
as we grow as a business and as professional, it's very important
to be able to adapt change. What makes finance and accounting
professionals and overall business professionals successful in
their career is the world resilience and business resilience. And
us being as professionals, resilience is being demonstrated
during business transformation in a form of a project in a form
of system change, even culture evolution as well. So there is so
many transformation that happens around us. Sometimes we're
directly in the middle of it as professional as finance and
accounting professional. And sometimes we are in the co-pilot
seats and sometimes we're impacted with it. So it's very
important to understand where we sit as professional in terms of
the business transformation.
 
Mitch: (02:28)
Well, thank you for that. Very good perspective to kick things
off. And I want to go in a little bit more about your personal
experiences and, you know, your company HARIBO is a 100 year old
private company. Now there's been a lot of innovation and
modernization since inception. So as an established company, how
have you been able to manage such a digital transition over this
time?
 
Wes: (02:51)
So, I'm proud to be working me and my colleagues in a company
that's privately owned and celebrate a hundred years, December,
2020. And, as we are proud of the values we live and the company,
we are, very proud of the projects and the success that we
achieve every year. In HARIBO of America, we started a growth
journey, starting 2015 and we're embarking in building our brand
and our business capability and manufacturing facility and our
organization and culture. We are predominantly a European
company, that adds most and the majority of the business in
Europe, but the North America business is, taking off, starting
2015. So it's kind of like a startup in our hundred years old
company and looking into the future, especially after what
happens in 2020 with the pandemic. It's important to look at that
as a challenge. However, it's more critical to look at that as an
opportunity and prepare ourselves, for the future to be able to
compete. digitization of business, there can be an aspect of,
simply handling data to all the way to producing a product. We
are, embarking on, opening our, new first North America
manufacturing facility next year in 2022. And, we are talking
these days about industry 4.0. Remote guided vehicles, robotics,
big data, troubleshootings and to be able to actually utilize our
scale and be efficient and get the best quality of our products
to consumer. And as a professional and different functions,
including manufacturing, engineering, sales, and finance and
accounting, everybody plays role in getting that achieved.
Sometimes in the most famous example of, digitization in, the
finance and accounting world is the ERP implementation or the
system that integrate the entire business, from end, to end. And
that would include typically the costing that we have, the
inventory that we look at, the analysis, the management
accounting, the financial accounting, the reporting, the
consolidation, of course, we all know about this, but what's
changing in the digitization is how do we use PI? What tools we
have in the world? What's relevant to our industry and what's
relevant to our function? And how is that gonna help the company
and educate from now to be competitive and continue to achieve on
strategy? So digitization is no longer just, an element of the
future, but actually absolutely is, how business is being done
today. And it develops, and it develops in a high speed.
 
Mitch: (05:51)
Now you just mentioned, the function specifically, right? How
it's impacting the industry, and then it funnels into the
individual function. So accounting and finance, how did the
finance function specifically play a role in some of the
transformation projects that you've been a part of so far? And
what would you say are some of the top enablers when it comes to
the finance function, going through business transformation,
digital transformation, and along those lines?
 
Wes: (06:18)
Absolutely. So everything starts from the strategy of the
business and where the business is heading, and everybody plays a
role in that, especially finance and accounting and finance and
accounting always have two hats in the business, a custodian hat
and a co-pilot hat, looking at the business, from a custodianship
standpoint, looking at the digitization or the systems or the
strategy being a custodian means finance and accounting plays
such a critical role in keeping the business in, strong
governance environment, understanding risk management. What will
we face, during our, growth revenue invoicing, risk management to
the plan we set to ourself allocating resources on budget to
certain initiatives...