Notes From the Field

It has been my pleasure to have had the opportunity to work with GreenLife Coconut Product Philippines, Inc. on an exciting project to streamline their financial management operations. This organization’s social mission is to create jobs and employment for the coconut farmers and help create a self-sustaining households in the coconut producing community. What started out as a small vendor in 1992 has now grown into a vibrant and innovative firm that sells several coconut-based products to vendors both in the domestic and the overseas markets. Like many organizations, its financial systems are challenged to capture the entire lifecycle of transactions that comprise its business operations.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the team faces travel-related challenges and only the local consultant could visit the GreenLife location. However, weekly meetings were conducted using Zoom and proved to be very effective in obtaining an understanding of the current operations as well as using this information to compare with best practices used by the industry. A gap analysis was performed that resulted in a list of recommendations that GreenLife management could consider for implementation. I would like to commend GreenLife management (Ms. Frances Rubio and her entire accounting staff) as well as Michael Pascual and Judith Agnoletto of Grameen Foundation for the leadership and project management skills to keep this project on track.

GreenLife’s management expressed their appreciation of the recommendations made by the volunteer team of advisors as they obtained a better grasp of the best practices used in the financial reporting of the agricultural industry operations. In addition, GreenLife's management were able to obtain a better understanding of the gaps in training that required remediation to take advantage of the full functionality of the accounting software used in the operation. This is a critical aspect of financial reporting and will go a long way in convincing external investors to provide capital to finance the growth of GreenLife’s operations.

I hope that I am provided with future opportunities where I can leverage what I have learned and gain additional knowledge of the people, business practices, and culture of the Philippines.