MAS Active Trading walks away with the inaugural CIMA Sri Lanka Business Case Award

By David Ebert

The CIMA Business Case awards were presented yesterday at a gala ceremony held at the Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo to fete the winners and the teams that participated in this novel competition, which saw the country’s top future finance professionals vying for honours, armed with well compiled case studies that showcased the corporate turnarounds and success stories initiated and executed by their respective organisations.

The competition was held in stages where the teams were expected to initially submit their individual case studies based on followed by a presentation to the judging panel consisting of PIM Director Professor Uditha Liyanage, Hemas Group CFO Malinga Arsakularatne, PIM Senior Consultant Dr. Travis Perera, Ernst & Young Partner Manil Jayesinghe and Hayleys Business Solutions Managing Director Dr. Arul Sivagananathan.

Delivering the welcome note CIMA Chairman Dirk Pereira stated that the institute has a positive outlook of the country at the moment and believes that there has never been a better time for companies to do business, while reiterating CIMA Sri Lanka’s role in producing professionally qualified leaders in financial management to support the thriving corporate sector in the country.

Delivering the keynote address at the ceremony was Tertiary & Vocational Education Commission Chairman Professor Dayantha Wijeyesekera, who commended the quality of the case studies presented by the teams and urged companies to facilitate cross company knowledge sharing of their experiences of operating and surviving in tough times. Professor Wijeyesekera also stressed the importance of promoting personal development through professional education among a company’s employees which he felt was the key to overcoming turbulent operating environments by having the right people in place to innovate and implement a company’s plans for success.

The Chairman and moderator of the judging panel Professor Uditha Liyanage delivering his comments on the judging process used to shortlist and finalise the winners this year stated at the outset that the definition of the ideal case study is a good story that is well made and well told. Continuing, Professor Liyanage stated that all teams were individually assessed according to the criteria agreed upon by the panel, which then lead to a shortlist of the top five teams who were then assessed  as to how the factors presented in the case related to the organisation’s success in the real world along with a review of the available literature, the conceptual framework, quantitative and qualitative data provided, the case narrative, discussion of the findings and the teams final recommendations.

The top three case studies shortlisted after much deliberation were ‘Winning in the market: The Airtel story’, ‘Winning the battle of being relevant:  The Elephant House story’ and ‘Finance transformation: A case study of MAS Active’. The MAS Active Trading team lead by Roshan Liyanage along with team members K. A. S. Sulochana and Varuni Fernando were chosen as the overall winner in the end, based on the clarity, methodology, final analysis, recommendations and overall practicality of the case study. The Bharti Airtel team lead by F. Z. Ansary with his colleague A. L. F. Ahamed walked away with the 2nd runner up prize while the Ceylon Cold Stores team of lead by Daminda Gamlath along with Surani Sahabandu and Divanke Fernando took the 1st runner up prize.

Commendation certificates were presented to the Hemas Holdings and Bank of Ceylon teams who came in at 4th and 5th place respectively, while certificates of merit were presented to the WNS Global Services, Ceylinco PLC, an independent team, Bodyline and Infomate (Pvt) Ltd teams.