Year spent in Taiwan studying Mandarin Chinese.

Responsible for the largest P&L in Europe (Channel NSV >£200m) and business partnering the sales force to our biggest and most strategically important customers - Tesco, Asda, Morrison’s etc. Key skills required were senior stakeholder management and strategic planning and thinking. Responsibilities:-Running the monthly forecasting cycle for Grocery channel to feed in to GB senior stakeholder meetings-Constantly challenging the numbers to drive opportunities and mitigate risks -Ensuring the correct P&L shape in order to beat topline plan but at the right margin for the business-Building the F15 Grocery plan using commercial insights and promotional strategy by customer-Stock in trade forecasting and reporting to assist in bringing more context to performance-Trade terms analysis and forecasting to improve efficiency and help shape customer conversationsAchievements:-Successfully implementing Advantage (new sales forecast system) way of working with sales team-Developed a number of new tools & reports in order to improve data clarity & drive the right commercial decisions. -Introduced and ran finance analyst community meetings to ensure better cross channel findings and learnings-Designed a more streamlined & simplified process for Tesco global overrider calculation and accrual management

Managing and supporting six separate sales teams totalling 150 people, the key skills for this role were prioritisation, coaching and business partnering. This role encompassed a wide breadth of financial capabilities such as forecasting, planning, capex & cost centre budget management, modelling, customer contracts and ROI. Responsibilities:-Running the monthly forecasting cycle for two OTR sub channel creating R&O for senior management-Reporting and analysing field sales investment spend and overheads budgets to drive out cost-Production of monthly capex reports with variance analysis and commentary-ROI analysis to improve efficiency of TI and A&P-Finance lead for contract negotiations with key strategic customers such as JD Weatherspoon’s and WhitbreadAchievements:-Simplification of capex reporting to save time and enable better decision making-OTR finance lead for pricing and trading model restructure (Named national deconstruction)-Finance lead for field sales re-organisation and budget restructure-Discovery and correction of large accounting error in Reserve field sales trade spend reporting

Reporting to the global finance controller of Green & Black's with responsibility for undertaking a variety of financial tasks for the global brand centre including P&L management, cost centre management, NPD costing, presentations and projects. Valuable experience was also gained in other areas such as demand planning, supply chain, sales and marketing.Responsibilities:-Management of the export P&L - Creating, analysing and providing commentary on variances under tight deadlines-Full top down & bottom up forecasting of the export business-Management of the global overhead & marketing cost centres - assisting the leadership team with budget setting, variance analysis, monthly reporting-Finance project lead for all NPD - building scope product costs and evaluation of future product P&L-Pulling together total global P&L and commentary for Green & Blacks into presentation for leadership teamAchievements:-Part of finance team which assisted with Cadbury integration of processes and systems into Kraft Foods-Produced a presentation to the sales team which evaluated promotional activity to calculate a variety of metrics in order to give guidance on promotional success - this was very well received-Demand planning project co-lead - large project into the complexity of G&B's organic supply chain in order to prevent on-costs from poorly managed supply-Forecasting simplification for export business

This involved working as the only finance member of the ITR team, supporting an international team of around 20 people made up of sales, marketing and supply chain functionality. Reporting directly to the MDResponsibilities:-Management of the ITR P&L - Creating, analysing and providing commentary on variances under tight deadlines-Production of monthly management accounts slides which were presented to the whole team-NPD costing and product evaluation for all projects-Pricing authorisations and margin managementAchievements:-Finance lead for Cadbury ITR integration into Kraft Foods-Complete overhaul of the complex ITR P&L – resolved inaccuracies in the postings and reporting -Designed and implemented monthly bottom up forecasting using detailed excel model – conversion of volume into financials leading to significantly increased forecast accuracy and excellent feedback from sales team and MD-Project Unity – a project to consolidate the worldwide ITR sales into one global P&L based in the UK. Budget transfers, historical data loading and transfer price setting all included.

Control and management of the sales and purchase ledgers - ledgers £9m each. Risk management and compliance were high priority as was developing the team of 4. This role incorporated a variety of tasks stretching beyond traditional ledger accounting.Responsibilities:-Development and investment in staff training. -Cash flow forecasting over a variety of currencies-Customer & supplier credit checking. Authorisation of account set up. Maintenance of agency relationships-Dealing with complex, high risk, high value situations with larger customers and suppliers-Risk, overdues & collections reporting and analysis -Reporting and Audit preparation - Accounting, VAT, Intrastat and Fairtrade-Month end closing tasks and checks to extremely tight deadlinesAchievements:-New starter, SL and PL manual developed. -Creditor and Debtor forecasting and analysis model created - this calculated future outstanding balance sheet values and gave insightful analysis by customer/supplier-Sage & company server management - ensuring correct accounting mapping, master data upload, security, training, new user set up, system back-ups and disaster recovery.

Management of sales ledger worth £9m, management of credit controller, reporting and analysis on risk, overdues, collections and bad debt, forecasting & modelling, intercompany ledger management, credit agency, insurance & legal relationship maintenance, customer authorization and set up

Supervising 2 SOP’s, export document production, complex delivery queries, weekly sales report, ensuring payment terms, invoicing and credit notes, unallocated payments, Month end reporting, reconcilliations