With the launch of ‘The Garage’, Pfizer Global Business Services Dublin is helping accounting trainees discover how they can apply digital technology to make their work faster and easier
It started with a conversation between colleagues about how their profession might evolve at a time of immense digital transformation, and how they might harness this transformative power to support their fast-growing Dublin enterprise.
Aoife Allen, FCA and Senior Director with Pfizer Global Business Services Dublin (GBS Dublin) recalls: “It was three years ago, and we were thinking about how we would be working in the future. I remember the question was, ‘what will our future colleague look five or 10 years from now?’”
At the time, Albert Bourla, Chair and CEO of Pfizer Inc, had set a challenge for the organisation globally to “win the digital race in pharma,” and Allen and her colleague John Anglim were overseeing a successful graduate programme for Pfizer GBS Dublin in association with Chartered Accountants Ireland.
“Our graduate programme was really starting to ramp-up then, in terms of numbers—a cohort of younger colleagues who had grown up with digital technologies, and we wanted to find a way to help them explore how we could use digital technology to make our own processes more efficient and effective, with an enhanced control environment.”
‘The Garage’ – a digital innovation program
So began ‘The Garage’, a one-hour weekly session, during which Chartered Accountant trainees were encouraged to explore how they might use digital technologies to make their work more efficient and easier to manage.
“We challenged them to come up with a project idea, and then to build it. It was about teaching our graduates how to think differently and pass their learnings on to the wider organisation, so that we could harness the power of digital to improve how we worked together within the organisation,” John Anglim, Director, Pfizer GBS Dublin, explains.
The Garage is an innovative applied learning program, developed and led by Pfizer GBS Dublin colleagues Colin Byrnes, Director of Global Process Transformation, and Lorna Flanagan, Director Statutory Reporting CoE.
Nurturing the digital mindset
“The idea behind the program was really about recognising a need to nurture and develop our graduates’ skill sets in working with digital tools and technologies as they progress through their accountancy training,” Colin Byrnes explains.
“Our Garage sessions take our graduates through concepts such as design thinking, analytics and problem-solving, as well as introductions to some of the technologies we use, like Alteryx, Tableau, Dataiku and Power Automate.”
As Lorna Flanagan sees it, The Garage is about equipping the accountant of today for their evolving role as the ‘accountant of the future’. “The role of the accountant has really moved on from repetitive tasks to providing higher value-add services,” she says.
“Our hope is that The Garage will set our graduates up to support problem-solving at Pfizer GBS and also enhance their accountancy training experience, so that we can support them to become our ‘colleague of the future’.”
Impressive results
So far, The Garage has yielded impressive results, with participants using new technologies, like Robotic Process Automation, Visualisation and Predictive Analytics, to build innovative solutions for Pfizer GBS Dublin and the wider organisation.
One such participant is Reza Shahrokhi, as Aoife Allen explains: “Reza’s project concerned an incredibly time-consuming process that was used by managers right across Pfizer to review Authorised Signature Limits (ASLs).
“Every year, these managers had to coordinate the review of thousands of ASLs on large Excel files via email. It was an incredibly time-consuming and manual process and, through his participation in Garage, Reza found a solution that was adapted for use across the entire organisation.”
Shahrokhi’s solution used Power Automate, a tool that integrates Microsoft applications such as Excel, Outlook, Teams and more, to simplify the ASL review process. “He effectively removed emails from the process, collating responses from managers in seconds and automatically updating files, reducing errors and time for follow-up,” explains Flanagan.
“Reza presented his project to GBS Dublin leaders and departments, showcasing his work at a GBS Dublin Innovation Forum where he was awarded one of 10 Innovation Awards in 2021. Reza really exemplified the Pfizer goal to win the digital race in pharma by making our work faster and easier. He explored and defined the problem and leveraged technology to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a manual process.”
Automating journal entries
Another successful Garage project by graduate trainee Kate Connell leveraged digital technology to automate the manual month-end journal entry process.
“Kate’s project explored a recurring issue whereby a manual journal had to be booked monthly to reclass original banking entries in the SAP accounting system to certain division- or market-coded accounts,” Lorna Flanagan explains.
“The process was taking two hours to post manually each month. By navigating and preparing a ‘process flow map’ and exploring the functionality of the Alteryx tool, Kate was able to apply a digital workflow to automate the preparation of the final journal.”
Connell’s project was showcased to GBS Dublin leadership and, as a result, different departments were able to leverage the technology to automate repetitive manual journal entries.
Digital workflow solution
Ian Banahan, meanwhile, used his participation in Garage to identify a digital workflow solution for an important financial supply chain process.
“Graduates who take part in The Garage are asked to identify a work activity they see as relatively simple but feel could be improved. The idea is to create a ‘focus’ for practical learning during the Garage sessions,” explains Colin Byrnes.
“In his day-to-day work, Ian was involved in a process whereby the GBS Dublin team calculates and communicates critical financial information to country teams supporting the financial global supply chain and distribution of products.
“While the process was robust and utilised the latest digital technologies to help calculate processes, Ian could see that there was still a lot of manual communication involved—via emails, for example.”
As part of his Garage project, Banahan documented the flow of information exchange involved in the process, uncovering challenges with information tracking and management.
“Ian used the Garage network to identify digital workflow tools that could potentially address these issues, assessed them and drafted recommendations. He presented his findings to GBS Dublin leadership and got approval to move ahead with the project,” says Byrnes.
“Since then, the Global Process Lead responsible for this area has developed the proposal further and the plan is to start implementing Ian’s solution by the end of this year.”
The future of Garage
Originally introduced in 2021, the 12-week Garage programme is now entering its third cycle and, for the first time, will be open to all Dublin GBS colleagues in addition to graduate trainees.
For Aoife Allen, the success of the initiatives is a point of pride. “I am very proud of The Garage. A lot of the projects that have come out of it have brought real value to the organisation, and to our day-to-day work as Chartered Accountants and financial professionals,” she says.
“These accounting problems and projects are so specific to the activities we are involved in that, really, only we can fully understand and solve them.
“By giving our graduates—and now our wider team—the tools they need, they are able to look at accounting processes and say with confidence, ‘I can automate this process, and then spend my working time using the information it’s giving me to carry out work that is far more valuable.
“They are effectively solving day-to-day end-user problems and that is empowering, because it encourages them to think differently about how they, and how we as an organisation, approach our activities.”
History of innovation
Pfizer has a deeply rooted history of innovation in Ireland. One of the first pharmaceutical companies to establish a base in Ireland, the organisation celebrated its 50th anniversary here in 2019 and now employs 4,000 people at five locations in Cork, Dublin, and Kildare.
GBS Dublin was established in 2003 and provides end-to-end financial accounting services, compliance oversight, and business transformation support to Pfizer operations spanning 150 markets worldwide.
As such, says Allen, GBS Dublin acts as Pfizer’s own ‘in-house’ accounting firm with the same high-value capability and talent resource.
“That is how we see ourselves, and what we have responsibility for are the complex, high-risk and knowledge-based accounting transactions that support Pfizer’s financial operations globally as well as regionally here in Ireland,” she says.
GBS Dublin is also among the biggest employers of Chartered Accountants in the Irish market outside the Big Four accounting firms. “We are very fortunate to have access to such a big pool of very talented candidates who have a really good reputation internationally,” Allen says.
“We have a young, qualified, educated, and diverse workforce. We have many different nationalities here; people who speak many different languages; who have experience in different local Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
“This means that we are able to provide an international organisation with financial support from here in Dublin, and we also now manage in-market colleagues responsible for statutory and fiduciary duties.”
Evolving role of the accountant
For Allen, who grew up in Wexford and trained as a Chartered Accountant with PwC, her time with GBS Dublin has allowed her to carve out a varied and satisfying career path.
“I joined GBS Dublin 16 years ago as an accountant after living and working in Australia for a while after qualifying. Since joining, I’ve changed roles eight times. I have had so many opportunities.
“After joining as an accountant, I became team lead, and then regional team lead, and progressed from there to a director role and, most recently, senior director, with colleagues from 41 countries reporting into my organisation.”
In the years since she began her own career, Allen has also borne witness to the evolving role of accountants in all sectors.
“How we do our job on a day-to-day basis now is very different to how it was when I trained. Great change is underway within the profession of accountancy and that change is being driven by digital technologies,” she says.
“We have access now to digital tools—not just these big Enterprise Resource Planning systems like SAP and Oracle—but also end-user technologies like Alteryx, Dataiku and Power Automate. These tools are allowing accountants to carry out our work in new and different ways and creating the potential for real innovation.”
Breakthroughs that change lives
This innovation is at the heart of the GBS Dublin ethos and the driving motivation behind The Garage and other digital initiatives.
“We have an amazing wealth of talent here in our own workforce in Dublin and, at the same time, access to these emerging digital tools that can really transform the way they work and add value to the wider organisation,” says Allen.
“We reckon about 75 percent of the people working for Pfizer GBS Dublin have a qualification in accountancy, tax, or another high-value profession. Our colleagues are highly qualified and highly capable people, and we are part of Pfizer; a company whose purpose is to drive ‘breakthroughs that change patients’ lives’.”
“Our own purpose and responsibility here at GBS Dublin, as I see it, is to employ that same ethos as an enabling function to the wider organisation and—just as our colleagues in science and manufacturing do—to use innovation to drive breakthroughs.
“Being a truly innovative organisation involves learning to do things differently, being open to change, and being prepared for a future of constant change.”
For Allen, meanwhile, how she approaches her leadership role as a Senior Director at Pfizer Dublin GBS is also changing.
“What I’m learning is that, as a leader, you have to get out of the way. You have to give people the space to come up with ideas and to share them. You have to ask everyone to contribute, to listen and encourage all of their ideas.
“That means listening equally to everyone in a meeting, from graduate right up to director level. I want to hear what the graduate has to say as much as I want to hear what the director has to say. You must listen, because absolutely everyone can bring something really valuable to the table.”
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