Accounting Supporting Business Divisions at the Forefront of Business Creation

When I was searching for a job post-graduation, a friend invited me to a seminar for women interested in general trading company careers. Initially, I hadn’t considered general trading companies in my search, but my interest in them grew as I spoke with employees and proceeded through the recruitment process. I had originally been interested in finding a mathematics-based job in finance, accounting, or something similar. However, my interest in general trading companies was piqued when an employee told me that work at a general trading company would be more interesting than working at a financial institution, even though both roles involved working with numbers. Ultimately, I felt that there could be more opportunities to challenge myself in different fields at a general trading company.

After joining Sojitz, I was initially assigned to the Human Resources Department where I was involved in designing HR systems and policies. Upon seeing my quantitative skills, my supervisor approached me about moving to the Tax Department, and I transferred departments just before the start of my third year at Sojitz. Since then, I have exclusively worked in accounting, with specializations in finance and tax accounting.

Sojitz was a frontrunner in the introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Japan in 2013. Although I have been involved in many projects, I found the mission to introduce IFRS to be particularly challenging. Financial reporting standards in Japan are rule-based, with meticulously defined standards. On the other hand, IFRS is a principle-based approach. In IFRS, fundamental ideas are outlined but decisions regarding specific details for accounting policies, procedures, and recording methods are left up to individual companies. IFRS requires accounts to be handled in a completely different manner to Japanese financial reporting standards, and when implementing IFRS we didn’t have any precedent to reference. Essentially, we were tasked with creating a new way forward. Under IFRS, it is important to consider the investor’s perspective when disclosing information. After the introduction of IFRS, we prepared financial statements in a transparent and easily comparable way, which is favorable for investors. Implementing IFRS has been a major project for Sojitz, and it is a huge success for the company to have pioneered this path forward in making financial reporting more accessible to investors.

General trading companies have changed a great deal since I first joined Sojitz. Previously, we mainly handled a form of trading called sale and purchase brokering, but now we see a greater number of business investments. General trading companies currently do more than broker business transactions, and business activities commonly include establishing operating companies and collaborating with partner companies to acquire businesses. In accounting, our core objectives are to perform the correct accounting processes and carry out appropriate settlements of accounts. These objectives haven’t changed, but I feel that with increased business investments, we need to employ more of a strategic approach to our finance and accounting work. In recent years, the Accounting Department often joins the initial stages of a project when Sojitz first gets involved in new business. It is becoming increasingly important to consider dividend policy to increase the profitability of investments and to determine which investment schemes are optimal, such as which countries are the most cost-efficient in terms of tax to pass investments through. I feel that we form a unified team when creating new business that encompasses employees from both accounting departments and business divisions.

A new section in charge of accounting-related DX was established in our department last April. The field of accounting is highly compatible with digitalization and DX as tasks can be labor intensive and involve handling numerical data. The new DX section will lead the Accounting Department’s efforts to focus on increasing efficiency and enhancing the quality of our accounting processes using digitalization and DX.

Naturally, there are many activities that we can undertake to increase efficiency, and we are currently working to develop a generative AI system to answer accounting process-related inquiries from across the company. We often receive questions from internal departments about appropriate ways to handle accounting and taxation processes based on specific situations, as well as questions regarding tax law in other countries. To date, we have assigned employees in our department to research solutions or consult with outside specialists to resolve those queries. Going forward, we aim to implement a generative AI system that can analyze and offer solutions to these inquiries.

In terms of efforts to advance and enhance the quality of our accounting processes, our corporate governance practices have relied on manual checks of documents, like invoice slips. Going forward, we wanted a system that could preemptively detect discrepancies in accounting data, so we created plans for such a system. We strive to improve corporate governance by shifting towards a preventative system that predicts errors before they occur, not after they happen.

The ultimate objective of DX in accounting is to enable each of our employees to focus on work that can only be done by people and not AI. I hope that we can automate replaceable tasks with IT and assign our employees to create strategies, such as examining our business investment policies and improving corporate governance. Going forward, I hope our department takes steps to become an organization that expands Sojitz’s business in tandem with the business divisions.

Similarly, as someone in a position of leadership at Sojitz, I think that it is not only important for us to cultivate our DX initiatives, but also to focus on employee development. This year, we created a career framework and skill map for taxation accountancy as part of a development program for junior employees. There are many different choices that can form an employee’s path to accounting. However, we will use this framework to visualize employee’s personas and show the skills required to become accounting specialists. We strive to encourage junior employees' desire to grow professionally, while simultaneously providing the framework as a tool for employees to think about their own career.

In order to encourage employee development, it is vital that we entrust employees with work that requires them to stretch their skills. Many employees improve greatly when they strive to accomplish tasks that are slightly beyond their current capabilities. Additionally, we are continuing to discuss and envisage employee development policies that can be implemented to help employees shape their career, for both current and future roles. I am committed to development programs that best serve the needs of individual employees, their teams, and the company.

I have been with Sojitz since the company was first founded, and I aim to always support the company and its growth. Going forward, I am excited to grow professionally as an individual. Similarly, I want to see how much new value the company can create for society and how broadly we can expand our global presence. I think that it is extremely important for members of the accounting team to work together with and support Sojitz’s business divisions, who are responsible for shouldering business creation. By working together on business projects, I think that accounting employees can proudly take ownership of business creation projects.

In terms of my personal aspirations, I have always enjoyed travel and I have visited around 50 countries during my time off, and I will continue to travel more in the future. There is no better feeling than when I travel overseas and see the brands, services, and infrastructure Sojitz has created, and when I meet people who have worked together with Sojitz.