I started to work in 1981 on a Mine and being the youngest member of the office staff I was properly groomed by a wonderful lady, lovingly referred to as Tant San. She was a no nonsense, no job is to big type of person and accuracy was a non negotiable ingredient of the smallest task to the salary of the General Manager of the Mine. I spent 11 years there and moved around from Time Office to Data Processing to Loss Control and the back to Time Keeping.
My next experience worthy of mentioning was a warehouse function where I got my backbone working with representatives in a blooming sales of computers environment. I also quickly grew from invoicing clerk to Warehouse administrator, and pretty much import costing and stock takes.
A merger forced me to look for other work and I landed a Creditors assistant job in a massive FMCG firm. I fell in love with the Creditors function and enjoyed the buzz between Creditors and the buyers. I also simply loved the involvement with the Suppliers and easily built meaningful professional relationships.
From the Creditors Department I ended up standing in for a Cost Accountant and from there I became a Supply Chain Analyst. I thoroughly enjoyed this and went on to start studying Financial Accounting, Cost and Management Accounting as well as Financial Information Systems.
I made a bold move and went to Botswana for 2 years where I focused on Debtors. I had massive backlogs to clear and I enjoyed most of the history hunting. I also got involved with BURS and SARS to get all the statutory reports up to date and up to standard.
I ended up applying for a Supply Chain Administrator Job and evolved from that to Supply Chain Coordinator. A bold move - but a more than satisfying move. I loved the absolute involvement in production planning, making plans, ensuring critical raw materials hit the plant on time. I loved projects to eliminate waste and I absolutely enjoyed implementing Health, Safety, RIsk and Environmental policies in my department.
After a few months overseas I came back and assisted a family member with Debtors. All in all I made massive lieu way in collecting long overdue funds and I placed systems in place to mitigate the risk.
I then worked at a firm for a few months where Debtors was an absolute disaster - and Lista Solutions was born!