03.04.2023 | The spectrum of tasks is wide in the world financial management, and this represent itself as changing responsibilities and diverse tasks during Efima’s Financial Specialist, Eeva Hotari’s, workdays. However, the sometimes fast-paced work doesn’t need to be done independently when you have the support of great teammates.
The days of Efima’s financial management specialist, Eeva, consist of different customerships and taking care of the financial roles within them – at best Eeva can work with every customership, in different roles. “Each customer has their own management systems as well as procedure standards, which has been a learning opportunity about different systems and most of all, the opportunity to grow as a specialist”, Eeva describes.
At the moment Eeva works with purchase ledger and accounts receivable. She describes herself as an even mix of a precise financial specialist, who loves numbers, and a humanist, who loves literature – this statement is confirmed by a master’s degree in literature alongside a bachelor’s degree in business administration. Originally Eeva found herself in the deep end of financial management almost by accident – through work. Literature is still present in her life during free time. She also spends her free time with movies and different sports whenever she has the time. “My days can be balancing between work and everyday life, but the most important thing in my days is breakfast along with my morning tea, because I’m a true breakfast person – I don’t really like to give up on that at all”, she states laughing.
An atmosphere of making things happen in financial management’s versatile world
Originally from eastside of Helsinki, Eeva recalls that she ended up working at Efima through few turns: “Actually I sent an application to Efima twice, because during the first time around, I accepted another job offer. However, Efima stuck to the back of my mind because I got the impression that people at Efima are “making things happen”, so to say.” This impression has turned out to be true as Eeva feels that the best things at Efima are especially the team spirit, colleagues and the mentioned "making things happen" spirit. “I feel that people are the best part of Efima, because at the end of the day, work is only just work”, Eeva sums up. On top of this, Efima’s company values have also spoken to Eeva along the way: “Especially come as you are is a refreshing value, because it appears as certain type of ease at the office – everyone can come to work and be themselves without any excessive formalities.”
When the responsibilities you work with multiply, you can see different processes more comprehensively and understand how they are linked to each other
Eeva describes that her usual workday consists of both routines, such as processing purchase invoices, and surprising situations: “Sometimes you can have urgent tasks to complete and in those moments you need to be reactive and prioritize things, so that they are sorted out in the order of importance, because there are certain time limits in financial management that need to be followed. However, these kinds of situation usually teach you a lot, which makes future work easier.” Eeva’s responsibilities have broadened from one customership to multiples, and different customerships have taught her a lot of things along the way – and the learning is still continuing: “Efima has a lot of opportunities from the perspective of a financial specialist: you can focus only on purchase ledger or extend to different financial responsibility areas according to your personal interests – for example, I’m now working with both purchase ledger and accounts receivable as well as with payment transactions.”
From a specialist to a strong professional
Financial management might often have the image of being a back-office function that runs routinely without any interruptions. Regardless, Eeva mentions that she enjoys surprising problem-situations that require investigation. “In a way, unusual situations make workdays interesting, because I like problem-solving and “digging” into things, but I do need a bunch of purchase invoices to process as a counterbalance”, Eeva laughs.
Problematic situations can also be sparred with a teammate or a team, and the reciprocity of teamwork is an important trait to Eeva – you can both ask for help and offer it to others. “I have had the pleasure of working with people who share very similar mindset as I. Sometimes we look into things overly thoroughly and sometimes we might accidentally talk things out of context, like what’s up in our lives generally”, Eeva describes and continues: “Teamwork and doing things with people are good counterbalance to otherwise independent work – you don’t have to always do everything by yourself or cope independently when you can ask for help from colleagues.”
At Efima I have had the opportunity to see how RPA and AI can be used in modern financial management, for example through software robot Aili.
Managing problematic situations requires both expertise and varying perspective when facing changing situations. Eeva says that she has developed especially in different financial management roles and feels that work at Efima has taught many things from outside the traditional financial management field: “At Efima I have had the opportunity to see how RPA (robotic process automation) and AI (artificial intelligence) can be used in modern financial management, for example through software robot Aili.”
Alongside RPA, Eeva mentions that financial service center world differs remarkably from in-house financial management with its diversity: the tasks of in-house financial management don’t divide as much, because of the risk roles that financial management has. Service center, on the other hand, makes it possible to work more diversely in different responsibility areas, due to multiple customerships. “When the responsibilities you work with multiply, you can see different processes more comprehensively and understand how they are linked to each other”, Eeva states. The specialist, who walked in at her first day, has evolved to a strong financial management professional and the growth keeps on going.