We cannot stress how much the cash flow importance to the health of a business. Let me quote “revenue is vanity, cash flow is sanity, but cash is the king”. As a business we would like to see a large inflow of revenue from each sale that we make, but the focus here should be the cash flow. Many business may still be operating even they are making loss especially if they can continue to manage their cash in & outflow, for example, delay payment to creditor so that the business have enough money to pay any variable cost. Ultimately, without cash, no business will survive long enough.

When a large or small amount of cash comes to a business, it is known as “cash Inflow” and this cash inflow come mostly from the sales of a goods or services activity. “Cash outflow” is the opposite where a business needs to pay for cost such as transport, labor, raw material and electricity. The different between both of this is called the “net cash flow” and it can either be a positive value or a negative value. When a business receives more money that they spend, it is a positive cash flow which helps to ensure the sustainability of the business operation.

A negative cash flow is when a company receives less money than its spending. This may let the business to struggle in paying bills and create the needs of borrowing money to help in the shortfall. In accounting, a clear indicator of a profit and loss is that the loss will be shown in a bracket. Well most of company may have a huge amount of cash reserve to survive; some smaller company may find this as alerting to them.

These come to a reason why controlling cash is essential to business sustainability. Management accountant role will have to be smart in dealing with a range of cash issues that arise.

· Make sure that there is sufficient cash available that is not tying in any unnecessary activity for future investment.

· Develop a process and procedure that help to reduce outstanding debt and making sure the inflow of cash is higher than spending.

· Controlling different level of cash outflow need to be done according to the size of the business. If your business is a car workshop, then make sure the outflow in buying car parts is done meeting the company needs and don’t overspend things.

Written by: Hafiz Hanafi (Comfori Sdn Bhd)

Kindly Click Here For More Info : CLICK

Finance Training : CLICK

HR Jargon Do You Need to Know?

Every profession has its own language or jargon. Here are some of the words you might hear coming out of an HR manager’s mouth and what they really mean when they use them.

A Seat at the Table:

Imagine a group of decision makers sitting around the table making a decision. Anyone who is there has a “seat.” It’s just a description of who is invited to the meeting. HR often talks about having a “seat at the table” to emphasize that someone needs to be there to ensure the people perspective is taken into consideration.

Additionally, the terms refers to a seat with the executive leadership in the executive conference room.This is where HR wants inclusion and input to decisions made that affect the strategic direction of the company and the successful deployment of the people to attain the goals.

Balanced Scorecard:

This term comes out of Harvard Business School, and as such, can be explained in either a very complicated manner or in this way: everything matters. You can’t just ignore your people and focus on the numbers.

The scorecard looks specifically at four different areas: Learning and Growth, Business Process, Customers, and Finances. Often, the HR Business Partner is heavily involved in the learning and growth portions of determining this scorecard for each senior person.

Competencies of Core Competencies:

These are generally the skills needed to do a particular job, but the reference is often a little fuzzier. Skills imply something concrete like - must know how to do financial modelling - while competencies can also include soft skills such as problem solving abilities.

When HR managers talk about Core Competencies, they refer to the knowledge, skills and abilities that are absolutely critical to the job. So, while it’s nice to have an accountant with good interpersonal skills, all accountants must be able to work with numbers.

Corporate Culture:

Every company has its own culture. Cultures can develop naturally without any effort, but often the HR department will attempt to build a specific culture. You’ll see mission statements and team building activities and a number of other activities designed to create a specific culture within the organization.

Good HR departments make weeding out bad managers (or training bad managers to become good managers) a priority in creating a good corporate culture. Bad HR departments focus on mission statements and then wonder why the culture is still toxic.

Downsizing, reorganization, restructuring, or rightsizing:

As a general rule, these all mean that a company is going to lay off a number of employees. It’s possible to reorganize and restructure and keep all of the employees, but in reality, if you hear discussions about company-wide reorganizations, freshen up your resume, because you might need it.

Family Friendly:

Businesses often claim that they are family friendly when they have policies that are meant to support working parents. Benefits such as flexible schedules, on-site day care, and generous sick leaves to care for yourself and your sick children are often cited as important aspects of a family friendly business. HR departments are usually the ones who develop and implement such policies.

Gross Misconduct:

if you do something that is so bad that the consequence is that the company immediately fires you, your actions were gross misconduct. For instance, if you set fire to the boss’s office, it doesn’t matter that you had a perfect performance appraisal the week before, the boss will fire you. Gross misconduct is generally determined by company policy rather than by law. But, just because the employee handbook doesn’t say no arson allowed doesn’t mean that the company won’t fire you - and have you arrested - for that action.

Let go:

One of many euphemisms for fired. Now, of course, there are two main types of “fired.” The first is when an employee is terminated for business reasons unrelated to performance. This is generally known as “layoff.” The second is a true firing - when an employee has done something wrong. That something wrong includes poor performance as well as something terrible like stealing.

Onboarding:

When you’re hired, you have a bunch of paperwork to fill out. This is the very basic step that is done for all new employees and in some cases, this is the entire “onboarding” program. Some companies have elaborate programs that involve cultural integration and building a general company knowledge base. The goal of all onboarding programs is to bring new employees into the company and get them working effectively.

Talent Management:

Talent = people, management = management. When HR people talk about talent management, they are really just talking about making sure that they recruit, train, manage, develop and retain the best people.

Sometimes talent management programs don’t include everyone in the organization, but only high potential employees and current leaders. Both management and HR departments are involved in a talent management system.

80/20 Rule:

This terminology is used for lots of different situations, but in HR, it typically means that 80% of the problems are caused by 20% of the employees. HR departments may also speak of “frequent fliers.” There are employees who seem to have problems with everything and everybody and take up a great deal of HR time. These words are certainly not a complete list of HR jargon, terms that non-HR people need to understand. But, hopefully, they will help you understand a bit more of what is being said - when HR speaks.

Kindly Click This Link For More Info : Human Resources Management

Petronas To Stay Focused On 'Cool And Sexy' LNG Business

Petronas will remain focused on liquefied natural gas (LNG) business for the long-term and is committed to maintain its leadership in the global LNG arena despite the dramatic plunge in oil prices since the middle of last year.
Petronas Executive Vice-President and Chief Executive Officer of Upstream, Datuk Wee Yeow Hin, described LNG as a "cool and sexy" industry with consistent demand.

"Demand for LNG will always be there and it is expected to triple by 2035, from 210 million tonnes in 2010 to 500 million tonnes in 2030 and reaching 600 million tonnes in 2035," he told Bernama. He said presently, there are about 30 LNG supply projects globally and this was expected to double to 60 projects by 2030.

"This year there are about 36 countries importing LNG and by 2030 it is expected to grow to 50 countries.

NG supply is a big portfolio in Petronas which has developed a track record of success across every aspect of the value chain, allowing the group to take a long-term view of the business over the short-term vagaries of the market.

Wee said Petronas would focus on supply capacity, diversity, flexibility of resource and pricing, and reliability, which lends the group its competitive edge.
"We have an end-to-end expertise from resource to marketing. We are also growing our diversity of supply geographically and resource types that would provide flexibility in pricing mechanism and contract volume where demand would be uncertain," he said, adding capacity was vital if Petronas wants to remain as a long-term global player.

Currently, Petronas has a 26 million-tonne LNG capacity and this will grow to 40 million tonnes by 2020.
"We are quite lucky because our exploration programme in the last three to four years has resulted in a lot of gas discoveries in Malaysia. Our gas reserves in Malaysia is about 70 trillion cubic feet (TCF) and we produce 2.0 TCF a year

Petronas also has eight LNG trains now operating and will have another train next year.
It also has two first-in-the-world floating liquefied natural gas facility (FLNG) with production of the first drop of on-specification LNG, expected in the first quarter of next year.
"Overseas, we have LNG in Australia and Canada, where we can dispatch to various parts of the world. We have both different types of resources, conventional and unconventional. In Australia, we have coal seam gas and in Canada we have shale gas," he added.

Wee said Petronas has the diversity that provided the group the flexibility to price its LNG and the ability to meet the varying demands from different buyers, thus ensuring its reliability as a supplier.
"As a supplier to Korea, Japan and Taiwan, we're seen as very reliable and that gives us the edge as the preferred supplier. We also have the proximity advantage which means cheaper shipping cost," he said. With security of supply from a variety of sources, a spread of pricing options and flexibility in contract duration, shipping and delivery, Petronas is set to maintain its position as a key long-term LNG global supplier.

Petronas last week displayed a milestone development in its LNG capabilities during the 26th World Gas Conference in Paris which featured interactive augmented reality scale models of both its FLNG units. More than 100 countries and 600 organisations attended the industry's most important gathering, with delegates representing technical, engineering, strategic and commercial disciplines, participated at the five-day conference.

( By : Noor Soraya Mohd Jamal, 14 JUNE 2015 )

CLICK THIS LINK FOR MORE INFO :http://goo.gl/a7uvy2

Retaining Staff- Marriott Hotels' Strategy

Talent attraction and retention is a hot topic within the HR community. HR Magazine spoke to Regan Takitsadaporn, Chief Human Resources Officer Asia Pacific, Marriott International Inc., to get this take on these issues and what his firm’s strategies are in this space.

He considers communication and engagement with staff to be one of the key strategies Marriott uses for talent retention. It chimes appropriately with Marriott’s slogan of “putting people first”, which he explained equally applies to staff as well as customers.

He pointed to the example of Hong Kong where Marriott office employees were recently empowered to have a say in the design and layout of their department’s workspace area.

In addition to consultation, Marriott has made strives to form a strong bond with its employees by launching initiatives such as “Associate Appreciation Week” which involved cooking classes, community service and a family day. This dialogue and sense of ownership should create a much more desirable workplace for staff, he feels.
He is confident that they have good tools in place as part of their Human Capital Strategies to attract high quality staff along with a strong employer brand. With Marriott has grown from one hotel in Asia to 25 years ago to 177 to present, a number expected to double by 2019. That level of growth will bring its own challenges and human capital strategies at Marriott revolve around preparing for that growth.

As part of retention, there has been a move away from a silo mentality historically - where each hotel’s talents are not necessarily encouraged to move within the group - towards a model where greater emphasis is placed on growing talent from within and allowing that talent mobility within the organisation.

To align the needs of the business as a whole with those of leadership, at each hotel part of management’s bonuses are measured according to the mobility of talent within the group. As of December 2014, 64% of management positions in the APAC region were filled internally.

In terms of development of human capital, every staff member at Marriott joins an ongoing development programme from day one of joining the company. This includes a “Voyage” programme for graduates that fast track them on to supervisory management positions within eighteen months of joining.

When discussing the qualities Marriott looks for in prospective employees, he noted that they are interested in “people looking for career rather than just another job.” He recounted at a recent hotel opening that he had a housekeeping member of staff ask how they could grow their career, which he felt was illustrative of the calibre of people they wish to recruit. Culture and competency fits were also seen as important criteria for new members of staff to avoid making expensive hiring mistakes.
On mobilising Gen Y, he mentioned that Marriott put a lot of effort into the human capital planning process with a yearly review starting at hotel level to identify staff with exceptional potential, particularly amongst the younger generation.

This knowledge is shared within the group to identify possible career moves within the organisation. He elaborates that, “Employees, particularly younger staff members, love the use of technology. We have ‘mobile apply’ as kids today spend more time on a mobile phone than on their desktop.”

This is location specific software that can be used to see all the Marriott jobs available in one’s immediate vicinity. So if you are having a coffee in Pacific place for example, you would see all the job application to be made from the mobile immediately, even by using the information from your LinkedIn profile.

He also added, “We are always thinking about what innovation we can use for our Voyagers (graduates). There is platform where they can interact with other Voyagers around the world - a kind of internal social networking.”
As Marriott faces stiff competition - not only from hotels but also particularly airline/pleasure cruise industries that are hiring people with similar competencies and backgrounds with competitive packages - he sees the Marriott culture of putting people first as one of the keys to successful talent retention.

At every hotel, before every shift there is a meeting, “the huddle” as it is commonly known in which an element of the firm’s culture is discussed. There is also “rap sessions” to enhance communication where the General Manager of the hotel meets with employees to discuss what they are doing well, what they are not doing well and what customer feedback they are getting.

Yearly interactive workshop sessions are facilitated by the hotel General Manager providing opportunities for feedback to senior staff and “Are something that staff really seem to appreciate” he added.

Three key points he felt any HR executive should bear in mind were firstly to fully understand the business and know where you need to focus to gain credibility with stakeholders. Second, for HR to remind themselves part of their role is to be there as an advocate for employees. Hence there is a need to be at the top table to remind management of the people side of the business. Finally, there is a need to constantly develop talent whom will become the next generation of leaders.