As part of the International strategy communicated by M&S to the market in November 2016, the Greece joint venture and the Czech owned businesses were identified as retain markets with the opportunity to stabilise and improve the performance of the business. The objective of this role was to convert the clothing and home retail operating model used for Greece & Czech from a centrally managed "push" supply chain model to an order based "pull" buying & supply chain model.

Key Deliverables:

• Understanding of buying, allocation and supply chain processes required to design the solution, create new processes, reports and metrics for the new strategic retail model
• Knowledge of the critical path, key concepts of planning, buying, markdown, fulfilment and store availability all required to be able to collaborate with the business and then design a fit for purpose solution to deliver excellence to the customer
• Delivery of best practice processes and implementation of innovative ideas to improve over the previous retail model.

As part of the International Strategy the remit was to deliver a cutting-edge reporting application which consolidates international strategic sales/stock data from both internal and external sources to highlight impacts on commercial performance.

Key Deliverables:

• Delivery of a new performance insight application (via Agile) for the International senior leadership team utilising new technology (eg Hadoop, Spotfire) to consolidate international strategic data
• Dynamically present data in a visual fashion that facilitate senior management decision making as well as providing the capability to drive collaborative communication and workflows
• Delivery of a reporting solution across the International business enabling reporting of accurate and timely data based on a set of defined and agreed metrics.
• Responsible for overall plan including cost effective decision making, budgets & risk, issue and change management
• Manage project dependencies both within International and across the UK business
• Identify clear requirements with measurable benefits for the project team to deliver against
• Build and manage relationships with key stakeholders, including third party suppliers 

• Successfully managed the eSAP reporting workstream ensuring efficient delivery of high quality business information and reporting based on key data drivers of the business
• Implemented changes from as-is ways of working & reporting to innovative new ideas to drive operational improvement and process improvement
• Removed obstacles to meeting critical success factors by influencing and clear communication with key stakeholders Identified the change management challenges and training requirements during differing phases of the project
• Delivered key legal and statutory finance requirements, including Greek Hellenization, in conjunction with the in-country Finance team.

• Assess impact of changes on process and produce detailed impact assessment matrix by role

• Advise on implementation plans based on knowledge of change/impact to both International & UK business ways of working
• Conduct commercial negotiations with existing partners to transition ways of working
• Develop, co-ordinate and deliver communications to ensure employee engagement
• Preparation, co-ordination and delivery of business change activities and events
• Define & embed new KPI's
• Design clear, well-produced, easy to use change management tools and templates

• Own the relationship between Finance and IT
• Identify & deliver projects that support the overall M&S MI strategy into other areas of the business as required, make suggestions and recommendations for ongoing efficiencies & improvements
• Ensure that all projects undertaken have robust and trackable benefits and support the business to track and measure these benefits
• Co-ordinate activities and dependencies for a single programme or large project ensuring the delivery is integrated and comes together at the right time to deliver agreed requirements
• Monitor and report on the progress of programme delivery, proactively addressing escalated risks and issues that impact delivery, feeding into a central view of risks and issues across the leadership stream and keeping the relevant stakeholders updated.

The Finance BW initiative was a 3-year global programme that delivered a group-wide data warehouse for BP's financial reporting, providing a single common source of actuals data. It delivered a significant increase in the effectiveness of the group reporting processes by improving data integrity, control and transparency.

• Managed relationship with all businesses within my portfolio (Italy, Brazil, USA, Malaysia)
• Strong relationship management skills in engaging local business resources and ensuring local requirements were actively listened to and met.
• Tracking and managing deployment plans, including deliverable quality, milestones, budget and resourcing
• Owning & delivering the detailed project plan for deployment stream, and ensuring all deliverables are met in line with the main programme plan.
• Issue and risk management, including inter-dependencies with other initiatives.

This project involved the incorporation of approx 14,000 new users into an existing SAP Business Objects (BO) community. Users were spread across 19 countries and 4 different business units. This role required both commercial and technical acumen to drive considerable change across the Shell global business

• Preparation and co-ordination of MI Business Impact Assessment Workshops (globally)
• Influence, manage and own key stakeholder relationships across all business units
• Supervise, guide and manage a global team of both business & IT resources
• Liaise with Solution team to ensure Functional Requirements understood and met
• Review and update of Functional Design Documents & User Confirmation Test Scripts
• Development of BO Training Materials & delivery of BO classroom training across Europe.

This project involved the introduction of new SAP functionality and processes into an existing SAP community (UK and Netherlands) as well as the United States business coming of a legacy system into the existing SAP instance My role was to ensure that best practice processes and master data rationalization was implemented to improve the efficiency and operation of the system as well as deliver the system to the users as per specification and to time

• Managing key stakeholders both peer and senior decision makers
• Identify process improvements and best practice to be incorporated into integration
• Provided guidance to my United States counterparts on compliance to common data structures, business structures and standardization and rationalization of data
• Active in Post Implementation Review and ensuring learning were taken into consideration for the next release.

• Successfully integrated new acquisitions into existing accounting framework in full and on time
• Re-engineered purchasing processes within acquired businesses to streamline and take advantage of synergies with existing system enabling the reduction of duplicate payments, increasing on-time payments and highlighting improvement with payment terms
• Manage team resource and ensure project funds are used effectively and efficiently
• Develop integration test scripts and perform unit testing
• Develop training materials and deliver training with positive feedback.

• High level analytics of budget, forecasts, overhead and business models
• Creation of complex financial models & using excel
• Produce consolidated 5 year budget and forecast for Executive Committee and Board of Directors
  
• Develop discipline and rigour around financial reporting system procedures and process, improving efficiency and reducing turnaround time on business queries.

• Managed group performance reporting across Australia & Asia including managing in-country finance resources
• Ensure the provision of accurate, meaningful and timely business and group performance reports
• Recognise and implement best practice process across the region to maintain work day 1 reporting
• Consolidated reports to produce Regional Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and MI reporting pack
• Manage intercompany accounts and transfer pricing decisions
• Delivered $30m reduction in Trade Working Capital as part of company initiative.

This project consolidated the stand alone, non-integrated SAP systems used in Germany and North America with the Australia/Asia/Latin America SAP system to form a global single client operation for the Orica Mining Services business.

• Managed the Finance Project Team (teams across Australia, Germany and North America)
• Ensure project resources were used effectively and efficiently
• Direct and coordinate the project in accordance with the project plan inclusive of standards and governance procedures
• Identify process improvements and best practice to be incorporated into the design
• Advise and recommend solutions to project issues
• Ensure effective handover of project knowledge to business teams

In 2003 Orica Limited purchased the minority shareholding in Initiating Mining Services Ltd (IEL). The entire business of IEL was acquired and integrated fully into Orica Mining Services' SAP including the payroll function. I led the Finance team for both business and IT and delivered this project on time in full.

In 2003 Orica Limited purchased Incitec Ltd acquiring its ammonia and ammonium nitrate manufacturing operation. The manufacturing operations of this site needed to be integrated into Mining Services SAP ledger. I led the Finance team for both business and IT and delivered this project on time in full.

• Assess impact of changes on process and produce detailed impact assessment matrix by role Advise on implementation plans based on knowledge of change/impact to both International & UK business ways of working Conduct commercial negotiations with existing partners to transition ways of working Develop, co-ordinate and deliver communications to ensure employee engagement Preparation, co-ordination and delivery of business change activities and events Define & embed new KPI's Clear, well-produced, easy to use change management tools and templates.