Having Your Cake and Eating It in Finance and Accounting
Blog: Capgemini CTO Blog
If you’re embarking on a career in finance and accounting, and you’re looking for scope and variety, you don’t have to swim in a small pond to become a big and interesting fish.
If you’ve just qualified as an accountant, I expect you’ll be thinking about you’re next step. One of the biggest questions you might be asking yourself is – do I go for a position in one of the big firms, or look for opportunities in smaller organizations or maybe even a startup?
The pros for a big accountancy firm might include the name above the door, job security and career potential. While the cons would be the size and “saminess”—the feeling you’re one among many, working within the rigid boundaries of your role.
If you go smaller, there might be more variety and innovation, and a better opportunity to make your mark. But will there be less scope for promotion and professional development in this smaller environment?
Build your own job …
Luckily the choice needn’t be this binary. At Capgemini, we offer the same opportunities for flexibility and creativity as our smaller rivals, and we’re actively looking for trailblazers who can build their own role within the company.
It’s not just the technology that’s making a difference, but the right people with the operational insight to think and act using intelligent automation within finance. It’s about lateral thinking and entrepreneurship, and we want more of it! For instance, my team has worked with FinTech companies that identify, protect and underwrite retailers from the prospect of fraudulent transactions through different sales channels. We’ve seen a shift in the last 5–10 years from patchy and inconsistent fraud protection coverage, typically operated by human intervention or a static rules-based system, to screening customer orders for manual review.
These solutions integrate across channels and apply machine learning to a prospective customer’s digital footprint by dynamically sourcing the metadata to approve or reject the transaction in a split second. This is an area of real importance to finance stakeholders, as it reduces the monetary impact of fraud and increases controls over financial and business risk. It’s even more important to the business, as it enhances the customer experience and keeps them coming back.
Likewise, we want our candidates to think differently and be curious about intelligent automation to challenge convention and excite our customers.
… that’s what I did!
There were several things I found attractive about Capgemini. My first role was with a national charity, where I was able to rise rapidly and develop my own role. Capgemini offered the same possibilities, but in the private sector and on a different scale. There was also greater opportunity for travel.
I especially like the collegiate atmosphere at Capgemini. People from different areas of the organization come together to get things done. We get really absorbed in the client scenarios we address and enjoy tackling them together as a team.
Another appealing aspect to the work is the evolution of its scope. For example, the fraud detection project I mentioned is an excellent example of how a financial services activity blends into other functions such as sales and marketing. The experience I’ve gained in these areas, as well as in procurement, HR and supply chain management, are being extended in the business transformation team I’m now part of on a daily basis.
Get in touch!
As a global business service provider we operate across different environments as well as national and continental boundaries. This means there are not only opportunities for travel, but also to bring your experience gained in one sector into another.
If you were pigeonholed in a big system, this kind of flexibility simply wouldn’t be possible. Nor would you be operating effectively as a stand-alone consultant meeting your own revenue targets, or a start-up entrepreneur who’s lucky to have the experience and infrastructure of a smart global organization at your disposal.
In short, you wouldn’t be able to have your cake, and you certainly wouldn’t be able to eat it. And why would anyone not want that?
Click here for more information about working with or for Capgemini.
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