Brenden Blakeman Email & Phone Number

Victoria, Australia

Victoria, Australia

Melbourne, Australia

Responsibilities:• Financial Management of a $4M turnover per year business including 12 staff.• Running and auditing monthly/yearly P&L reports, payroll and coordinating our annual tax returns.• Foreign Exchange Management including booking forward currency contracts through Western Union protecting 60-75% of expected sales for the month.• Recruiting staff and conducting annual performance reviews, working through staffing issues to improve efficiencies and maintain a high standard of customer service. • Identifying opportunities for staff training and promoting staff into higher positions where appropriate. • Design, develop and maintain the company website including connection with the BENE & Trenitalia reservations systems. • Using Umbraco CMS, kept all product content & pricing up to date and created Rail Pass promotions.• Overseeing the company’s operational expenses and identify opportunities to reduce expenses, implementing changes to staffing, processes and procedures accordingly. • Adding new products and removing products that are not profitable. Achievements:- Designed and project managed the creation of a new company website in conjunction with professional web developers, with live train bookings, travel agent login & tracking functionalities. - Introduced monthly staff recognition and team target rewards which greatly improved morale and lifted sales by 13%.- Organised an external training group to improve staff customer service skills and understanding of the importance of being efficient and responsive. - Reduced operational expenses from 2016 – 2019 by 22.5%, by ensuring appropriate staffing levels during our peak and off-peak seasons and introducing net fares for our individual train reservations, therefore reducing sales overheads and improving margins. - Implemented a Fraud Safeguard for our online booking payments, using SecurePay fraud settings to cut lost revenue due to fraudulent online orders by 95%.

Melbourne, Australia

Responsibilities:• Developed/implemented the Operations and Customer Service department policies and procedures.• Recruited, trained and management of 11 employees over a 5-year period.• Implement individual KPIs, making sure that they were met. • Implement operation processes to increase accuracy and productivity.• Recruit and train new staff on our product & systems.Achievements:- Headhunted by Company Director to grow a new company – International Rail.- Expanded the Operations team from 2 to 12 staff.- Introduced staff KPIs to help track our productivity and identify any performance issues.- Overhauled shipping, changing from Australia Post & Toll International to Toll (domestic) and DHL.- International, which improved our tracking and saved us over $10,000 in lost/missing tickets per year.

Melbourne, Australia