Paul Smith Email & Phone Number

Experienced Finance Leader with a demonstrated history of working in the leisure, travel & tourism industry.I’ve worked at Flight Centre for over 10 years now and I’ve had varying roles in my career, starting out as a management accountant, progressing to a financial reporting manager, a financial controller, & commercial leader for a number of brands within the group. A few of my key achievements include:-I led the outsourcing our AP function, where the outcome was a $500K saving to the business unit p.a., whilst decreasing processing time from 45 days post travel to just 14, enabling us to invoice our customers well within an SLA of 30 days post travel.-Working with the business operational teams, and identifying key gaps in the process, I established a new approach for our AR collections team to chase our suppliers for commissions own to FCM. This change in process delivered FCM an additional $1.2mil (+20%) in commissions on the prior year.-Leading a team of 6 and acting as a key Subject Matter Expert on our Leisure transformation project, we documented every front line operational process in detail, and recommended future processes to align with the deployment of D365FO mid office platform. -Whilst working as the Commercial Leader for Corporate Traveller, I worked with the brand leadership team and Regional Sales Managers to design and successfully implemented a new wage structure into the brand. Post the implementation we had a higher staff & customer retention than the prior year combined with a increase in service fee income. -Active participation in the Flight Centre Senior Finance leader group, facilitating L&D workshops for finance staff and mentoring finance individuals in our mentor program.-Configuration and expansion of the CRM used in our Travel Academy brand to deliver greater insight into the business and their students. I streamlined our marketing & sales team efforts in reducing the amount of duplication of work, and provided greater visibility for forecasting student enrolments, and revenue generation.-During Covid I have successfully brought our leasing payments function in house from an externally partner. I have built processes and controls to ensure the smooth transition of the function, whilst also managing the financial liabilities of closing down half of our store network and recognising rent relief on the other half.