Salma Abdelgelil - Senior IDS Manager
"In IDS, I worked on SAP, Business-to-Employee systems, and finally as a section manager for plant systems.
I believe that the deep business understanding that I gained from all of my previous roles is my strongest asset."
I was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt. I never lived outside of Egypt. Both of my parents are university professors. I have two other sisters. I have been married for six years and have a four-year-old daughter ‘Hana’. My husband also works for P&G IDS (Information & Decision Solutions). I graduated from Helwan University with a major in commerce & foreign trade.
I am not much into sports; I would rather spend time outdoors and I love camping. I like to spend as much time as I can with my family, relatives, and friends. I enjoy a nice meal with friends or family over almost anything else in the world. I love watching comedy shows on TV because I really enjoy laughing. I hate serious, horror, or drama movies because they put me in a bad mood.
I have many values in life, but the most important one is: “family always comes first”. All of my decisions, whether personal or professional, stem from that belief. I also believe that integrity and caring for people can take anyone a long way.
I had an unusual but interesting career path at P&G. I joined P&G over ten years ago in Finance & Accounting (F&A). I did a career move from F&A to IDS. The criteria that I have used to make career and assignment choices have changed over my career based on what I wanted or needed at that point in my career and life. This is different for each person, and it is important for everyone to regularly evaluate this. Overall my career has been extremely rewarding and very challenging. Prior to my current role as Middle East and Africa supply network solutions section manager, most of my experiences were related to Finance or Financial Systems. In F&A, I worked in the plant in cost analysis, corporate accounting, and financial analysis, and as a profit and cash flow forecasting manager. In IDS, I worked on SAP, Business-to-Employee systems, and finally as a section manager for plant systems.
I believe that the deep business understanding that I gained from all of my previous roles is my strongest asset. Understanding P&G’s financial systems, processes and business management equips you to handle almost any job possible. I came to realize that in order to excel in a job, whether as an accountant or as a section manager in IDS, it all boils down to four things:
- Deep business understanding
- Working as hard & as smart as you can to deliver results
- Being a good collaborator, team player and people person
- Always working with a sense of urgency
My advice to you:
- Work as hard as you can. There is no substitute or shortcut for working hard.
- Try to be as productive as you can at work. A phone call is more effective than a long email. Try to shrink the duration of your meetings by at least 50%. Instead of sending an invitation for a two-hour meeting, try to reach the same conclusion in only 30 minutes.
- Keep things simple. I do not understand things that are complex. Decompose matters back to the basics and start from there whenever you want to understand something or communicate something.
- Operational discipline - always be on time and be dependable
- Keep a healthy perspective; keep a balanced life - our jobs, albeit very important, are just ONE of the many things we do. A healthy perspective helps you put work issues and challenges in their proper light and makes it more fun.
I am very passionate about organization capability building, I find recruiting, mentoring, and developing my team extremely rewarding. I take training very seriously and believe there is no greater thrill than to see someone who works with you develop and grow.
