Seemingly mild-mannered Helen Brown doesn't sit in an office behind the scenes. This industry CPA, with the auditing background, not only likes to rock the boat, but swims upstream as she's bailing out the water.

Helen is senior manager of Business Process Reengineering for Bristol-Myers Squibb in New York City, and works in the Global Strategic Sourcing Group. No, this isn't just high-toned vernacular for the '90s. It's a way of conducting business in BMS' increasingly competitive $16 billion world with 40,000 employees.

An Auditor's Approach
Helen applies her auditing skills in this pharmaceutical environment to analyze a situation, develop an approach, make recommendations and follow through with practical solutions. One of the primary goals of the group is to determine how the company can be run more efficiently, both in terms of dollars and functions.

Hired out of college in 1990 as an internal auditor, she strongly believes her training and knowledge as a CPA not only applies to her position within her group, but in strengthening--and focusing--her day-to-day interface with the human side of the business.

“This is a wonderful area for CPAs who want to move beyond the traditional approach to doing business,” says Helen. “As an auditor, you go in, talk to people, take a step back, look at the business from a broad view and quickly assess the situation. What you're doing here is really taking things, shaking them up and coming up with something better.”

One of her current projects is the Preferred Vendor program in which she capitalizes on the company’s buying power to negotiate better rates with hotels, airlines and other vendors. BMS employs a large number of personnel that travel during the work week. Saving money in hotel business centers, transportation and even hotel workout facilities is a primary goal to doing business efficiently, and Helen sees to it that BMS negotiates for the best savings.

“When we started this initiative almost three years ago, what helped me move into this function were my audit skills,” says Helen. “We were looking to redesign our internal control structure, but we did not want to take the traditional functions, chop them up and just put in new procedures. We were more interested in understanding how the process worked.”

Challenging the Norm
While the objective is saving the company money, the bigger challenge is to remove job functions without sacrificing productivity. Helen finds that she constantly faces the mindset of people who do not want to change, but later realize that change enabled them to face up to what makes a business stronger for the long term.

Although Helen’s group is part of the company’s productivity initiative, she quickly points out that the reengineering title should not be mistaken for downsizing tactics.

“Clearly with this process, you’ll reduce headcount,” she says. “Too many companies go into downsizing blindly because they did nothing to change the process. With business process reengineering, people can do more with less because you change the way people approach the business.”

Helen would like to hear from other CPAs in similar positions, or from others who want to find out more about her company’s initiatives. Contact her at hbrown@usccmail.bms.com, or visit the CPA Vision Project Website at www.cpavision.org for more information on her reengineering initiatives.