Cfo Thought Leader

When Mark George first joined Otis Elevator’s accounting team back in the late 1980s, he found fixed asset accounting to be different from what he expected. Says George: ”We had to run around the company and put barcodes on any new piece of furniture that the company had purchased.” What’s more, George tells us, he roamed the corridors as a deputy in the accounts payable department, “punching A/P vouchers” and acquiring any necessary signatures. “I was always thinking, ‘How do I get away from doing this?,’” comments George, who notes that as a 20-something-year-old he sometimes felt like a “fish out of water” at Otis, which back then—as it is now—was part of the larger conglomerate patchwork that is United Technologies Corp. “I understood accounting to a certain degree, but I was definitely not an accountant,” recalls George. Less than enamored with the Otis accounting career ladder and potentially facing years of manual work, George began to speak up as he roamed the office and suggest changes to certain pol