Simon Letten Email & Phone Number

London, England, United Kingdom

Adding automation to existing processes. Reviewing workbooks and suggesting improvements.

London, England, United Kingdom

ASOS bought the Miss Selfridge, Topman and Topshop brands from the Arcadia Group in Feb-2021. This included their wholesale business and the wholesale trade management system called WTSO. I joined a small team (one other developer, a tester, and a business analyst) supporting and developing the WTSO system. This is a set of Excel workbooks with an Azure SQL Server database as the back end with a few Power BI reports. Projects included new data columns in the workbooks and database, new features in the data-entry process, new stored procedures, and new developer tools for making changes to workbooks in production. One project was coordinating with other teams on the specification for a scheduled export of data from WTSO for consumption by other systems. In addition, I did code review of the other developer’s work, reviewed the test cases and UAT scripts and ran knowledge-transfer sessions.

London

Part of eight-person team that updated the existing Excel workbooks used for managing sales to wholesale partners for all brands. We transformed the system from standalone workbooks to an Azure SQL Server database with Excel workbooks as the front-end and Power BI reporting. This project employed Agile methodology including sprints and daily stand-ups.Developed ad hoc Excel workbooks for the Project Management team pulling data from SharePoint and for warehouse staff to run stored procedures on an Oracle database. Other mini-projects included data querying and transformation and an Excel workbook that uses the Trader Support Service (TSS) API for making declarations under the NI Protocol.Made redundant at the end of May 2021 following Arcadia Group going into Administration in Nov 2020.

London, United Kingdom

I support and develop a suite of Excel workbooks that are integral to the Buying and Merchandising teams for Topshop and Topman. I was hired to take ownership of the workbooks from the contractors who had developed them and to work with the business SME to further develop them to meet the changing business needs. The workbooks include pivot tables, user forms, popup menus, sql queries and some ribbon customisation. User requirements can evolve rapidly and prototyping of ideas helps drive this. The workbooks have been documented, aligned with code standards and checking the code modules into Git Hub is now part of the development process.

London, United Kingdom

Developed new Excel workbooks and Access databases to support changing business practices. Some integration with SQL Server and development of Business Objects reports.I was hired to improve the mostly-manual transaction entry procedures by creating new Excel workbooks and developing existing ones. This involved the creation and scheduling of Business Objects reports as part of the move away from legacy reporting software. Additionally, I developed Access databases as part of Pantheon’s Strategic Projects programme. Technologies used include Excel/Access VBA, ADO for connection to Excel workbooks and SQL Server, DAO in the Access databases, ad hoc SQL queries and PowerShell.The projects included transaction entry forms and data validation, task assignment and tracking with Outlook reminders, bulk entry of fx rates into legacy software, cash flow projections, fee calculations and fee reporting.

London, United Kingdom

I developed Excel workbooks to support the launch of their UCITS fund and, subsequently, a managed account. The main project was a trade booking system which read confirms from emails and from text files, generated the input for the portfolio management system and sent an email to the execution broker detailing where the trade should be given-up. End-of-day trade reports were automated using Excel/VBA and delivered using email, FTP and SFTP. In addition, I developed workbooks and documented processes for monitoring and reporting UCITS and AIFMD exposures and VaRs. I wrote Python scripts for housekeeping tasks such as archiving files and checking that report files had been created.

London, United Kingdom

I developed and supported applications for all areas of the office but my focus was on the trading and research teams. Development was primarily in Excel/VBA with some VB, MySQL and VbScript. GLC traded European, US and Asian equities, exchange-traded derivatives (futures and options on equity indices, bonds, interest rates and commodities) and fx (including emerging-market fx).My primary role was the implementation, support and monitoring of trading books and models for all the asset classes traded by GLC. The trading books included the display of model outputs for the traders, p&l, trade-entry and some risk measurements, as well as reporting values to the back-office. I introduced price validation in the trade-entry process, programmatic rolling of futures contracts and scheduled apps that checked the integrity of the Excel workbooks. The Bloomberg API was used to get static and historical data. I also developed automated test scripts for use when making changes to the design of the workbooks. Early projects included trade and position reconciliation, automating offsite backups and implementing stored procedures and triggers in the Sybase database.

London, United Kingdom

Developed mainly in MS Access and Excel. Supported legacy applications and MS Office.

Master'S Degree, Msc Energy Conservation & Management, Pass With Distinction

Bachelor Of Arts (B.A.), Jurisprudence