Introducing Téné, Management Controller at UBY
What is your background ?
I hold a Master’s degree in Finance and Management Control from the Ecole de Management Léonard de Vinci (EMLV). I completed this work-study programme in a tobacco products wholesaling company.
I chose a business school after the baccalauréat because I wanted to keep a generalist focus for my higher education. During my academic exchange in Canada, I also chose generalist courses because I hadn’t yet decided on my career direction.
I’ve always had a thing for figures, which is why I specialised in finance and management control during my Masters course. I wanted to move into positions where I would be directly involved in corporate strategy, which is why I chose this programme.
When did you join UBY? What were your drivers?
I joined Thibaut Grospierre’s team, the administrative and financial manager, in my current management control position in 2022.
I’ve always been interested in the construction and civil engineering sector, but when I left school I didn’t have any experience in the industry and didn’t know whether I’d be the right person for the job at UBY. It seemed that my personality and motivation took precedence over previous experience.
The job itself gave me the prospect of working with several teams within the company, both operational teams and the management team.
What does a Management Controler do at UBY? Can you tell us about your job description? What do you especially like about it?
Every month, I work with the accounts department and the operational teams [ in charge of deploying UBY solutions (editor’s note)] to monitor all the sensors worth more than €500. We need to keep track of each sensor throughout its lifetime (5 years) for accounting reasons and to optimise our fleet of equipment.
This table completes the information that the accounts do not have: what is the value that can be capitalised? When a sensor is damaged, lost or stolen, the accounts department needs to be informed so that the asset can be removed from fixed assets.
This reporting file helps with the company’s strategic choices – whether to buy or rent equipment – because we know precisely the costs or cash impact of the various items of equipment and how they are financed.
I’m also working with the Operations department to set up a budget control system. This involves monitoring the budget for each project by comparing revenue and expenses. I make sure that the profitability calculation made when a contract was signed is correct. Sometimes certain projects are not as profitable as initially planned, and it’s up to me to learn from these deployments to find solutions and avoid this happening again in the future. This may involve better anticipation of expenditure, renegotiating our terms and conditions with our suppliers or even modifying certain contractual clauses so that the risk is better shared between us and our customer.
More generally, I’m working on analysing and reducing UBY’s costs, mainly with the Operations team. Indeed, it’s in this department that we find the most variable costs that we can influence (purchase of equipment, stock management, etc.).
Every year I also work on the budget for year N+1. This enables us to know all the costs for the coming year so that we can better manage our financing and cash flow requirements.
Is there one aspect of your job you particularly like? What have the challenges been? Can you tell me about a project you are particularly proud of?
In my day-to-day work, I like the cross-functional nature of my job, which gives me a global view of the company. My contacts are at all levels and in all teams, which helps me to understand the company’s strategy. This global view enables me to issue points of vigilance on the orders that are placed so that I can know and control the stock.
Not every day is the same. As a management controller, we deal with problems on a daily basis, solving them to help the company run smoothly. But I don’t only have extraordinary issues to deal with, my job is also punctuated by a certain regularity with the monthly accounting and financial closings.
I have good relationships with my colleagues and learn a lot from each of them.
One of the things I’m most proud of in my job is the way I monitor costs and implement processes to improve the profitability of projects. For example, I keep a close eye on the conditions under which employees book their various trips, and I’ve issued clear instructions on this subject. You can never be sure that a trip will be cancelled or postponed, and for a management controller, it’s better to buy a ticket at a slightly higher rate than to end up with a dead loss on a non-exchangeable, non-cancellable ticket.
How do you see the future at UBY?
I’d like to take on new challenges, have the same motivation and use my imagination to set up new projects and find new solutions to the challenges we face.
UBY is growing fast and we are constantly looking for new employees.
To view our current vacancies, visit our LinkedIn page.