Meet Aarthi Rangarajan, Director of Finance and Accounting
“PEA Group has been a successful business for 75 years now. My primary goal is to ensure I continually and consistently contribute to the positive growth of the company.”
Say hello to Aarthi Rangarajan, Director of Finance and Accounting and member of PEA Group’s leadership team.
Aarthi completed her MBA from the University of Madras in India. Beginning her career in the operations division of a renowned bank, she later moved to lead the finance and accounting department of a manufacturing engineering supplier. There, she guided the company through to a successful acquisition by a global entity.
Aarthi joined PEA Group in 2018 and oversees finance and accounting operations, managing budget, compliance, and financial reporting. Since joining PEA Group, she has learned and enhanced her business acumen, crediting several colleagues. Aarthi believes life is a constant cycle of learning and finds that she receives a daily dose of knowledge from her co-workers.
As the Director of Finance and Accounting for PEA Group, her key focus has been improving financial reporting and increasing efficiency. “PEA Group has been a successful business for 75 years now. My primary goal is to ensure I continually and consistently contribute to the positive growth of the company,” Aarthi states. She believes that financial statements provide a complete insight into the periodic performance of the business and their timeliness is an essential component of assessing the financial health of the company.
Since joining PEA Group, several business process improvement strategies have been implemented within the accounting team that has increased speed and accuracy. Combine this with streamlining the fiscal closing process, Aarthi acknowledges, and they are able to deliver timely and meaningful financial reports to stakeholders. Collaboration and coordination with other business contributors are a top priority for the team. Aarthi credits the leadership team for being open and receptive to changes in business processes that enhance overall efficiency and performance. This has been critical to the successful adoption and implementation of each change.
“I can confidently say that I have helped increase the financial cognizance and awareness within the company, but this job is not yet done.” Driving the overall financial accountability has been one of the biggest challenges Aarthi has had to face. She and her team are consistently working on improving that, choosing to focus beyond the numbers and empower critical business decision-making.
While Aarthi and her team have made many substantial improvements over the years, she believes the roles and responsibilities of the Director of Finance and Accounting today go far beyond coordinating accounting operational functions. As the Director of Finance and Accounting, her goal is to help formulate and contribute to the business’s strategic goals. This could vary from adding new KPIs to reports that reflect on the business goals or provide deeper analytics into key areas of the business performance.
To date, Aarthi and her team have developed and implemented several business performance metrics based on the end-user group. “We are constantly transforming data into business drivers that impact operational decisions,” she states and believes these metrics have helped translate the company’s financial health into action items to address risks and opportunities. By implementing an internal controls program, Aarthi can monitor PEA Group’s cost performance and ensure adherence and compliance with corporate policies and procedures.
Aarthi’s success and perseverance over the years have led her to be invited to join the Leadership Group where she supports and contributes to the corporate goals. She believes this is a great opportunity not only to learn and grow herself but also to contribute positively to the company’s growing success. This allows her to develop and maintain business partnerships with other company leaders while also providing a platform to harness data-driven analytics to highlight performance, enabling smart business decisions.
As her team continues to focus on automating transactions and improving efficiency in processing while prioritizing accuracy, Aarthi is looking forward to the opportunity to help guide the direction of the company’s goals based on KPIs and market trends. Given PEA Group’s 5-year trend, she also looks forward to sustained growth and expansion for the next 5 years.