Varun Sareen CPA (Aust.), Vice President Finance at GreyOrange, a warehouse automation company, has more than twenty years of technical and functional experience in the world of finance.
Keen to take the next step in his career, Varun began considering what more he could do to position himself better from an international point of view.
“I came to know about the CPA Australia program from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India’s email that they are holding a joint session together just to make the members aware about this program and Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA),” says Varun.
As one of the world’s largest professional accounting bodies, CPA Australia positions its over 170,000 members in a global network. Having contacts with other members working in 100 countries and regions across the globe makes it easier to create an international career.
Spearheading innovation in business
CPA Australia ensures that future business leaders are well supported in their learning journey and develop an innovative mindset to deal with challenges in the world of business.
In his current role at GreyOrange, Varun is responsible for the finance strategy and accounting operations for its global business. In order to better understand cutting-edge innovative methodologies relevant to his role, Varun undertook the CPA Program.
One topic during the course, business model innovation, was of particular interest to Varun. “I’d studied this topic before but just the refresher and going through the topics again and reading about it was very interesting for me.”
During his professional journey while working on the process of a business transformation within his own organisation, Varun worked towards reshaping the workforce.
“I had to work hard to decentralise decision-making and introduce specialisation of roles. This change towards creating an agile team was not easy as I encountered cultural challenges I navigated through those times by acting as a role model, opening the channels for frequent and regular communication and rewarding behaviors that supported the change.”
“I also worked closely with the internal IT and risk control team to mitigate risks related to confidentiality of data, and compliance framework. Successfully leading through the innovation, resulted in improving the customer net promoter score and faster cash collection.”
By utilising his knowledge gained from the CPA Australia program, Varun has successfully enhanced the vision and mission statement of GreyOrange.
Varun believes the CPA Program has given him practical frameworks to improve the process in his role. “I have been able to apply the balanced scorecard technique to ensure we have a robust and wholesome method to measure performance for the organisation and the functional teams covering the financial perspective, the customer perspective, the internal process perspective as well as the learning and growth perspective,” says Varun.
Stepping stone to a leadership position
Before choosing CPA Australia, Varun explored a few alternatives and it was the course subject Global Strategy and Leadership that he previewed on CPA’s website that made him excited.
“For me personally, I was looking at something from a leadership, strategy standpoint that will help me grow in my career as well. The CPA Program fitted well and that's why I chose it,” explains Varun.
Another factor in this course’s favour for Varun was that it was practical and accessible for a fulltime worker like he was.
“The course was also easy to pursue because this program was fully online. The pandemic also helped me to make the decision because travel was difficult and there weren’t many options available for candidates like me who are in the Asia pacific region and couldn’t travel to Australia to take an exam.”
Varun achieved a high distinction in the subject and found that working through the course at regular intervals helped him fall into a habit that worked really well for him.
“As a working professional it might look tough to manage between work and study when you first see the course material. Sometimes just opening a book and reading can become monotonous but the CPA course material is very helpful with videos for this program shared on their website, which made it easy for me.”
Find out more about the CPA Program at an information session.
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