10
SPEZIAL
|
CONTROLLING INTERNATIONAL
|
ISSUE 12
|
SEPTEMBER 2015
CONTROLLER
Edyta Szarska [ESz]:
How did your controlling
adventure start?
Karol Sikora [KS]:
My controlling adventure (as most of my
lifetime) is connected with the Polish Post. In spring 2004,
after almost two years of work in financial accounting, I
started my work in controlling. I was one of a nine-person
team in charge of budgeting and profitability of postal units
of Szczecin region. My team, called Controlling Financial
Politics Department in Szczecin, was also in charge of labor
costs, liquidity management and the measuring and normal-
ising of processes.
In September 2005 as a result of the Polish Post restructur-
ing, the decision in favour of Activity-Based Costing (ABC)
project regional engagement was made. I was responsible
for the input and calculations of Szczecin region data for
ABC.
Today I work in Warsaw and I am in charge of the Polish
Post Management Information System (in part concerning
information about institutions and customers).
[ESz]:
Has ICV helped you in your career?
[KS]:
It is difficult to find any concrete help of ICV member-
ship in my career. However, as ICV member I had a possibility
to attend ICV WG meetings and to talk to and to discuss
with professionals more experienced than me. It was my
very unique development. This wouldn’t have been possible
without my engagement in ICV.
I still have fond memories of the time when the Polish Post
CFO received a letter of gratitude from ICV Poland for my
engagement. One day our CFO invited me together with my
Director for a meeting. It was stressful because we had no
idea what the reason of this invitation was (I also received
this letter but did not realise this could be the reason for the
meeting). The CFO started the meeting by congratulating me
and the meeting was very pleasant. Next month I received a
symbolic financial incentive.
Edyta Szarska,
ICV working group
Warsaw, Poland.
Karol Sikora,
Leader ICV working group
Warsaw, Poland
MIS Manager
POLAND
CAREER IN
CONTROLLING
OF THE POLISH POST
[ESz]:
You have conducted the ABC project in a
huge organisation. Such a project must have been very
complicated. How was it?
[KS]:
You are right, launching ABC in the Polish Post was
a huge challenge. I was not a full project manager but I
managed the sub-project of identifying, categorising and
providing data for this model (statistical research of times of
processes and norms). Seventy percent of our activities are
measured based on time, so we may say we implemented
TD ABC.
Our five-person team built a base of processes to be nor-
malised. We travelled a lot around Poland, we discussed with
bottom-level businesspeople and we learnt processes in real
life. They were often different than we thought working in
our Warsaw office.
The ABC project was finally completed with success after
four years; I worked on it for three years (2010–2012).
Our success is very important for us, especially because
this one was the second trial (first one was undertaken in
2004–2009 and was not finished with ABC).
[ESz]:
How often do you update nominal time of
activities?
[KS]:
Our nominal times are changed when the process
changes are done, i.e. optimised (nowadays we have con-
tinuous optimisation). If it happens, we measure times of
activities of such process one more time. Our politic policy
is to measure activity not faster than six months after opti-
misation to let workers learn new kinds/sets of activities (as
learning curve idea says).
If there are no changes in our processes we measure them
every third year. We are confident that in real life some uni-
dentified changes of processes might be done and we want
to be as close to reality as possible.
INTERVIEW
WITH KAROL SIKORA
Questions asked by
Edyta Szarska
