We asked Martin DAcosta Ruiz, Business Requirement Manager, Cemex, what he finds most valuable about APQC membership.
What tools, expertise, services or information do you use most?
The most frequent information I look for is related to budgeting and forecasting, and the finance processes—how other companies, big companies, execute these processes. You can find a lot of helpful information in APQC’s Resource Library. It is very useful to have the APQC membership, as we have found several documents regarding budgets, benchmarks, and related best practices that we are able to leverage and incorporate into our organization.
I use APQC for my role at Cemex on strategic and daily projects as well as for my continuous learning as a finance professional. APQC provides information related to practices around the world, which are the processes, which are the trends.
How would you justify your APQC membership to someone?
When we’re working on a business case or designing a process, we need to have an open mind to what other companies have done and where we can implement and/or adapt the same. Even if the organization is completely different in terms of industry, size or location, the content can be adjusted to fit our company.
APQC’s articles and benchmarks give us a good reference of the processes and best practices by other companies, so we gain certainty that our process is moving in the right direction.
Membership resources help increase our speed and also prevent potential failures because we know what other companies have tried and didn’t work for them. We can also confirm that what we’re working on, and what we have planned, is organized to be as successful as possible.