ASIA its productivity and efficiency .
“ For our business , technology is very important . It ’ s crucial for the finance and accounting function , but it ’ s also vital across all of Daimler ’ s subsidiaries ,” Nitsche says .
“ With technology comes the opportunity to automate certain activities to free up your team . This means they can do fewer manual tasks and focus on the more interesting , value-adding jobs .
“ On the infrastructure side , when we established our second site in Clark , it became a hub site for IT ,” he continues . “ For example , in this site , we installed a stateof-the-art server room , which houses Smart Row cabinet .
“ Our Cebu and Clark site are fully integrated and capable of absorbing the load of each other in case one site fails to perform ,” he adds .
On the other hand , whilst technology has been a core focus , MBGSP hasn ’ t forgotten its most important asset : its people .
As a result , the Philippines firm is investing heavily in development and training programmes to help attract and retain the best talent in the region .
“ We have soft-skills programmes from communication to change management and stress management to leadership , which are all equally important ,” explains Nitsche . “ These programmes are not given arbitrarily ; each employee ’ s career plan is carefully designed by their respective managers together with HR .”
It ’ s been seven years since MBGSP was first founded . Years before , Daimler has already started its Shared Service journey with Daimler Group Services Madrid ( DGSM ) and Daimler Group Services Berlin ( DGSB ). Since then , the Daimler subsidiary has gone from strength to strength , offering state-of-the-art finance and accounting services and more . In doing so , MBGSP has bolstered Daimler ’ s position in Asia-Pacific but , not one to rest on its laurels , Nitsche believes it ’ s only the beginning for the firm .
“ In 2011 , we started with three employees in total . Now , we have almost 500 in both Cebu and Clark .
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