BONUS | Rob Mars - The Global Passport

Contact Rob Mars:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-mars-3738402/


CMA Certification Overview:
https://www.imanet.org/cma-certification
IMA's Website: https://www.imanet.org/


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)
Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam
Larson, and today I'm sharing with you another bonus episode in
our series. As hopefully you've recently heard on our podcast
IMA's Senior Vice President of Certifications and Exams and
Content Integration, Dennis Whitney, joined us again to talk
about how IMA responded to the challenging times, brought by
COVID-19 and share some updates on sitting for the CMA exam. In
that conversation, he also mentioned how CMA's have been able to
help their organizations, weather the storm across the globe,
which is a perfect segue for today's episode, where we will hear
from Rob Mars and experienced financial executive and proponent
of IMA CMA certification. Rob talks about the value of having a
CMA and validates many of the points made by Dennis in our
previous episode. Rob referred to the CMA as your global
passport. So keep listening to hear what that means and other
insights from this experienced management accountant.

Mitch: (01:09)
When we first spoke, we Identified the CMA as really being this
global credential. So in your opinion, how has the CMA really
helped you from the start of your career to where you are
now?

Rob: (01:23)
Long time ago in the eighties, I started my finance career with
Borg Warner. I joined this American multinational as a financial
analysist in the European head office in Amsterdam. It was a
great organization to work for. Plenty of room for development,
with young people, senior jobs, and a strong emphasis on
financial reporting, performance analysis and forecasting. I do
still recall we put lots of hours into variance analysis and
filling up the ROI chart. One of the seniors in the finance
division in the US was the key promoter of the CMA, and Borg
Warner was also a corporate supporter of IMA. I decided to go for
the CMA. At the time, it was still a five-part exam. I had to
travel to the US. I remember driving with our Finance Director to
Columbus, Ohio, to attend the exam together, and it went well,
and onthea way back, you know, I was tasting my first root beer.
That was a different taste. I was keen to study for further
develop, but a full postgraduate study, found to have it. So CMA
was a good choice for me. It gave me a good overview of relevant
topics. It gave me training and practical tools for my work, and
it gave me more understanding of the US context. In our company
we had many CMAs, and the fact that we had gone through the same
training also helped us to work across borders and communicate.
We had a common language and understood each other better when we
discussed things like breakeven, contribution margin, variable
costing, absorption costing, financial analysis, etcetera. And if
we got in doubt, we could either refer to the same textbooks. So
it was a good way to, to work across the borders.

Mitch: (03:21)
So that leads us very nicely into the next question here. You
know, you referred to the CMA as a passport. So what do you
really mean by that and how is this really, an international
credential?

Rob: (03:37)
Yeah. What, I worked for seven years with Borg Warner after I
joined Nedloyd, an international shipping company. And after two
years in the Netherlands, I moved to Tokyo with my family. Later,
we moved on to Hong Kong, London in Singapore and South Korea as
well. So we enjoyed working and living in Asia and Europe and
meeting new people and learning from different cultures. But when
it comes to CMA at the time, it was all very different in my home
country. When I did my CMA exam, there was no Netherlands
chapter, no CMA exam site at all. I got my CMA in 88. To get a
university, free university in Amsterdam, we managed to start an
exam site first as a trial, and then they started a CMA review
course. It's great to see it for more than 25 years, they have
run it successfully. And now over two separate CMA training
courses, one in Dutch and one in English. Amsterdam is the
largest chapter in Europe. Right now, you can find chapters in
many more countries. It's a good way to meet like minded finance
professionals and network and learn from their experiences. All
those countries didn't have them when I lived there. Now more
than half of IMA membership is outside of the US. They are fairly
active region offices, Amsterdam, Dubai, Singapore, China is
truly global now. This is an incredible achievement, and I'm glad
to be part of this.

Mitch: (05:11)
What exactly do all of these chapters have in common when it
comes to management accounting, and what are these professionals
have to offer with their CMA that really add value to their
businesses?

Rob: (05:25)
What I find with the CMA, it's a part I like, you know, I always
love to work on management accounting sideof finance. I have a
great respect for all those who are experts in statutory and
financial accounting, but I enjoyed the business part role more.
I find it important to have people in the team who are experts in
both fields. I saw that we could add value to the business with
things like decision support and quotation tools, financial
analysis, customer product profitability, performance
measurement, etcetera. With this we could help steer the business
and create more value added. At the time in my team, many people
were trained in CPA, local CPA, mostly. And the benefits of those
is that you learn the statutory texts and, financial reporting,
focused on your own country. The difference with the CMA, you
know, business and management, accounting, financial analysis is
very of global. It's very international.

Mitch: (06:39)
So what additionally, working with IMA and the different chapters
that holding the CMA, you know, volunteering all the work that
you do. Now you're a global board member. What personally do you
want to share as far as your perspective on IMA and everything
that it's done for you and your career?

Rob: (07:03)
Good point. So another aspect I enjoyed very much being part of
this IMA family. As I mentioned before, IMA  was in my early
days, pretty much US focused and centered. Now with a substantial
presence in the regions and more than half of our members live
outside the US and IMA Board we also have now a more diverse and
international members. To meet up with chapter leaders, and
members from countries all over the world during conferences is
great and I find very valuable. Apart from such networking, I
also believe that as an IMA volunteer, gives you an opportunity
to train and practice leadership skills, it is an intangible
benefits, and truly rewarding. You can start in a local chapter
or getting involved into regional or global board or a technical
committee. There's a lot to choose from if you want to put
yourself into a volunteering role . I  really get delighted
to hear from young people, students, young professionals, how CMA
is helping them in a career developmet. It's very encouraging.
They could improve their harness skills by being part of his IMA
community and connect with like minded people from the world.
It's great to see this happening.

Closing: (08:17)
This has been Count Me In IMA's podcast, providing you with the
latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and
finance profession. If you like, what you heard, and you'd like
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