Creative leaders are driven to attain excellence. They are dedicated towards their efforts and never give up at the face of adversity. Dedicated CFOs take every challenge as an opportunity and employ innovation to achieve their goals. They are made of grit, dedication, hard work, and intelligence.
One such dedicated CFO dedicated to take his business to the heights of excellence is Rajnish Magan, the CFO of Beumer India Pvt Ltd. His professional journey as a CFO was filled with numerous challenges. He believes that as a CFO you are co-captain of your ship along with CEO. Accordingly, you would be the first person to know if the ship is going on unchartered waters and is drifting from the defined path.
As the CFO, Rajnish advises the board and the CEO on all key business performance metrics and suggests corrective actions and mitigation plans to take care of risks and any business eventualities. Also, he keeps track of all areas related to performance, compliance, governance, growth and sustainability.
Rajnish believes that just like all instruments in the orchestra must perform in symphony to achieve desired musical experience, all business functions including support functions (FA, IT, HR, commercial, etc) of business should collaborate and perform to optimum level for achieving business results.
Source of Inspiration
For Rajnish the challenges put forth by the business every day in VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) world makes him deliver his best. They encourage him to find the most efficient and workable solutions for his business including the interactions with different business teams and managing people related issues.
Confronting Challenges Sensibly
Rajnish believes that for a CFO, challenges are a daily task. One must learn how to manage and overcome them. However, the nature of challenges keeps changing depending upon the development and dynamics of internal/external factors.
He states, “For us the challenge especially last year post Covid 19 was to keep employees motivated, engaged, and keeping close eyes on the business results progressing in line with revised forecast post Covid to HQ & other stakeholders due to loss of one quarter (Apr-June)”.
Under Rajnish’s leadership Beumer India also had to maintain enough liquidity in the system from customer side. Furthermore, it had to take care of small vendors in supply chain by keeping them lubricated and keep going to tide over the crisis.
About Beumer
Established in 1935, Beumer is a global leader in the arena of design and manufacture of intralogistics systems for conveying, loading, palletising, packaging, sortation, and distribution. The company employs 4500+ employees worldwide and has an annual sale of around EUR 950 million. The company keeps constant touch with its customers ranging from associated companies, sales representatives, and wholly owned subsidiaries in more than 70 countries.
The key features of Beumer India Pvt Ltd that sets it apart from other players in the market are as follows:
- Integrity & Ethics
- Customer Focus
- Teamwork
- Quality & Innovation
- Sustainability
Beumer Group emphasizes on 9 leadership principles. They are as follows:
- We treat each other with trust, respect & fairness
- We strive for performance
- We think and act as a Beumer group
- We make others successful
- We promote two-way feedback
- We create transparency in our business
- We take ownership
- We stick to common targets and guidelines
- We lead with long term perspective.
Combating the Pandemic Courageously
There is no industry or business in the world that has remained untouched by the COVID 19 pandemic. During such testing times, it calls for innovative procedures and swift communication to sustain businesses.
Under the dedicated stewardship of Rajnish, the company communicated with teams through team leads in small groups to keep working (work from home). It also conducted a few town hall meetings to address the employees about the steps the company was taking to make the workplace safe. Rajnish states, “we had all SOPS in place by our HSE dept; this way when we opened, we started operations with 30% and gradually by Dec came to 90 % occupancy in office”.
Rajnish states that the customers faced difficulties during the pandemic and wanted Beumer India to restart manufacturing operations at project sites with due precautions. With a catch-up plan to ensure timely delivery, the company geared up with an action plan to deliver on its contracts/projects despite the hindrances caused by Covid 19. He further states, “the customers really appreciated our efforts in this direction”.
Nurturing a Vibrant Work Environment
According to Rajnish, Beumer India conducts quarterly townhall meetings with employees to keep them informed about key business developments and future plans. He along with CEO leads the company to conduct monthly department meetings to engage and motivate them and listen to their issues and take necessary actions to resolve them on priority.
Beumer has defined processes to appreciate employees for their good work and living the company’s values and principles. “We organize various sports activities inhouse and outside office for the mental and physical wellbeing of employees and other employee engagement activities are also organized time to time”, says Rajnish. He further adds, “We also encourage an open and transparent work culture and employees can approach senior management in case their issues or concerns are not resolved at their manager level”.
Essentials of a Business Leader
Rajnish believes that for any business leader or CFO, it is essential to have the trust of all stakeholders to deliver effectively. A leader is expected to ‘walk the talk’ and embody the values/ ethics which are percolated down the work levels.
He further adds that to be successful, and individual should remain grounded and should always remain connected to business, markets, and employees.
Pep Talk
Rajnish advises the young entrepreneurs to take care of the employees and the business with efficiency and dedication. He tells them to always listen to people and to find innovative work solutions adaptive to business and compliance requirements.
Steppingstone towards the Future
Rajnish believes that globally, Beumer Group has been quite consistent in growth. It has been fortunate enough to have not been much impacted by Covid 19 due to its business spread across different business verticals. He states, “certain verticals e.g e commerce warehousing automation has started looking better post Covid. Same also hold good for Beumer India and we are consistently growing over past 3 years and over CY 19 our topline in CY 20 has still grown 35% post Covid”. Rajnish believes that with the announcement of the budget and the Govt. spending on infrastructure of Rs5.54 lakh cr, the different sectors of economy catering to infrastructure should perform better and this would give further impetus to Beumer Group’s business in India.
