Speaking to The Financial Express, finance director (Asia & South Africa) Dominic DiMarco, said that the Thailand accounting operations would be handled from Chennai this year while the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan would follow within the next two years.

Explaining the arrangement, DiMarco said that for every sale made in Australia and New Zealand (where the company has been selling cars for the last 75 years) invoices would be raised there and the data transmitted to Chennai for processing. The Chennai office would work on the data to prepare various statements such as sales reports, receivables, payables (in case of purchases) etc and send them back to the middle and top level managements located in their respective countries.

By doing so, the company can effect considerablereduction in overheads as fewer people do more transactions. It would also result in uniformity in accounting. The problem of various country specific accounting practices would not come in the way of this exercise as Chennai is used for only the basic accounting operations.

DiMarco, however, refused to quantify the likely savings in cost on account of this move. The necessary infrastructure in the form of computers and other related hardwares are in the process of being put up and senior level employees from respective countries would help in training the local staff. Ford Motor Corporation is currently working out the manpower requirements and a final shape would be known in the next few months, he added.

The company is planning to set up another centre, probably in China, for handling the transactions emanating out of China and Japan.

Ford, he said, had done a similar exercise in Europe where the accounting operations of various countries was initially centralised in England and Germany before it washandled out of Cologne, Germany.

The technical capability of people in India, especially in accounting, is said to have influenced Ford Motor Corporation's move. Chennai clinched it as it was close to Ford's Maraimalai Nagar manufacturing facility and also had the advantage of a comparitively lower real estate costs. "By moving things into Chennai, we will be efficient both in terms of quality and cost," DiMarco said.

Ford Motor Corporation is not the only multinational company that is moving their accounting operations to Chennai. Recently, Banque Nationale de Paris has indicated that the entire back office operations of non-French speaking businesses would be handled out of Chennai.