[ZPT] Move your career to the forefront with CMA

[CMA Philippines]

By Zeni Roy

While management accountants in the past largely focused on cost-containment and reporting, today they are acknowledged as crucial to formulating strategy, long-range planning and decision-making.  Some financial experts call them value creators, not just preparers of financial statements and reports.

If you are a certified management accountant or CMA today, your area of expertise goes beyond the traditional scope.  Not only are you expected to deliver sound business advice in understandable, non-technical language, you are also expected to be an expert in line operations, business expansion and IT initiatives, among others.  Recent surveys show more and more top executives consider CMAs as playing a more strategic role in the company and in overall operations.

These changes in the corporate world have fueled demand for accounting professionals, particularly for CMAs who have strategic analysis skills, technical abilities and international experience.  Both public and private organizations actively seek accountants with the ability to see the big picture and provide strategic advice.  Practitioners who understand international transactions and accounting standards will find many opportunities in today’s global business community.

A practitioner may obtain a CMA designation by enrolling in a CMA program. Up until recently, CMA programs were only available countries like Australia, the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong but now they are also offered in China (Shanghai), Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Lebanon and Sri Lanka.

For the first time in the country, a CMA program is now being offered courtesy of the Institute of Certified Management Accountants of Australia (ICMA) and CMA-Philippines.

Tailored for busy executives, the program offers participants the opportunity to earn the globally recognized CMA designation.  Two courses have already been held—the first in May this year and the second in August to October--with a total of 78 senior executives taking part ranging from CFOs, VPs and directors to managers, analysts and consultants.

One of those who joined the first CMA course was Joselito Diga, Finance Director of United Laboratories, Inc. Diga describes the techniques he learned at the seminar as “useful, comprehensive and very practical.”

He says participants learned to apply accounting concepts in the fields of marketing and sales, concepts that would help one’s organization become more competitive not only in terms of cost-efficiency but also in terms of “the value that we can deliver.”

As far as variations in accounting standards between Australia and the Philippines are concerned, or between the Philippines and any other country for that matter, Diga says this did not present a problem during the CMA course because no matter what country you are in, “the challenges of business are fairly similar and business decisions are also fairly similar.”

Would an accounting professional who took the CMA course improve his competitiveness in the finance industry?

Definitely, says Diga, adding that a CMA designation would undoubtedly enhance one’s career opportunities both here and abroad. “There is a big need to upgrade the skills and competency of Filipino professionals,” especially now that Filipino managers “are very much in demand abroad,” he adds.

Diga also says that after attending the seminar, he realized “we also have pockets of strength” as far as management accounting practices are concerned. “But we should learn from Singapore,” whose best practices standards are “very good” and largely complied with by its corporate citizens.  The focus on responsible accounting and quality financial reporting -- a result of the financial crashes of recent years -- is a positive development, says Diga, because it will help prepare companies for 21st century competitiveness without disregarding the social responsibility angle.

Another satisfied CMA program graduate is Glenda Cañete, AVP for Finance and Accounting at PruLife Insurance Corporation of UK.  “Actually I’ve already used some of the techniques I learned at the course,” she happily shares.

Soon after finishing the program, Cañete’s firm needed to outsource a project and was considering a number of suppliers.  She was asked to make a feasibility study of all the applicants and then to recommend one.  She applied the techniques she learned at the CMA course and breezed through the assignment, easily picking out the best supplier in the process.

Cañete also says she found activity-based costing very helpful, particularly in internal auditing tasks and in assessing time-wasting activities so that they can be eliminated.  Even in marketing, finance and decision-making activities, Cañete says she found herself now more equipped with the system tools with which to analyze the numbers, see the story that these numbers tell, and use them to predict trends.

Given how much she learned during the course, this AVP is certain the CMA program would also be very useful to accounting professionals in other fields such as in banking and insurance.  Says Cañete:  “I endorse this course to my accounting friends!”

Another participant, banker Angel Lopez, says the introduction of a CMA program into the country can only be a positive development because the Philippines has been lagging behind other countries in this field.  Lopez, CFO of Chinatrust (Philippines) Commercial Bank Corp.,  says “some of the CMA practices we do are not yet being done by local banks.”  He reveals that Taiwan-based Chinatrust already introduced activity based costing -- one of the more popular topics in the CMA program – to its local organization in the latter part of 2003.

“The fact that [the CMA program] is applicable to all industries is a plus,” says Lopez, but he qualified that the banking industry and the financial sector in general have somewhat different concerns.  He says as a banker, he found the course to be “very general” and the concepts taught leaning more towards manufacturing than to banking.  But he also agrees that overall, it is a step forward for the country’s management accounting profession, “especially now that the Philippines is gearing up for good governance standards.”

CMA-Philippines will hold the 3rd CMA Program from January 15 to April9, 2005 with the theme, “Upgrade Your Future.” Venue is the Holiday Inn Galleria Manila.   Advanced Strategic Management Accounting and Advanced Management Accounting courses are on offer.

Apart from the popular activity based costing or ABC, the intensive program schedule covers a diverse range of topics that include Corporate Strategy in Modern Firms, Marketing and Strategic Management, Financial Dimensions of Pricing in International Markets, Performance and Strategic Financial Structures, Strategic Value Analysis, Distant Early Warning Systems and Triple Bottom Line Accounting.

For more information, please visit our websites at http://www.cmaphilippines.com and http://www.rmpconsultancy.com. RMP Consultancy is an authorized reseller of CMA Training Philippines.

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